Domestic Electronics
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: Once upon a job in retail, an average Joe took home a returned domestic electronic from the Transformers brand. These are glimpses into a normal life with tiny electrodomestics running rampant through the apartment. (Pt. 12: Everyday life is boring, or "The D.J.D. goes a'plunderin'." )
1. Chapter 1

**Script Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 1

**Warning to Audience: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Show Rating: ** G

**Continuity Stage: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division, Pharma, Scavengers, Bob the non-Insecticon

**Theatre Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Acting Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

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Figures. The one day I took an extra shift at the appliance store, and someone returned another domestic electronic. One of the Transformer brands, the worst kind of return. We can't send them back to the manufacturer once they're out of package, but this guy had a gift receipt. Frikkin' holiday gift policies. We don't take any form of returns on opened electrodomestics, but gift receipts are an exception. So this guy walked out with an equivalent exchange (he chose a less sentient appliance) and we got stuck with a rather aggressive TF brand domestic rustling around in its box.

"The heck we gonna do with him?" Bob was reading the back of the package. At least the guy was nice enough to bring everything he could back with the return. "Says here he's part of the D line, so he's got a working transformation system and territoriality issues. Justice Division? Aww, crap."

"What?" I was opening the top of the box cautiously. The hissing wasn't a good sign. The guy said this thing was harassing his cats.

"I was gonna say that I'd take him, but I've got one of the List Transformer models." Bob showed me the packaging. "I picked it up cheap before they canceled the molds. They're collectors' items now."

I read the package. Apparently the D line Justice Division models were made to hunt down certain other Transformer models made specially for that purpose. Dang. Yeah, I could see why mixing D.J.D. and D-List molds would be a bad idea. "Got any friends that want a bundle of joy dumped on their doorstep?" I gestured down in the box, where our little return was glaring defiantly back at me from the corner. "Do these things bite?"

"Mine never do, but Fulcrum's kinda a wuss. I can't tell you how many times I've had to rescue him from the toaster."

"Your toaster tries to hurt him?"

"No, but Misfire keeps telling him it will if he looks away. I get the bread out in the morning, and suddenly Fulcrum's running in terrified little circles around the table."

I looked up and blinked. "That sounds really cute."

"It is until it wakes the neighbors."

"Ah. Yeah, good point." I looked back down. This particular electrodomestic didn't look nearly so cute as Bob's mismatched bunch of returns sounded. Then again, he'd been building up his collection for years. I'd only been working this appliance store for six months. I'd picked up a half-functional turbofox TF Pet model with an incurable digestive virus, and I already regretted that every time it drooled on my rugs.

'Tarn,' as his packaging claimed, looked even less friendly than the Pet. I eyed him and sighed. Well, it wasn't like we could just abandon the hostile 'bot somewhere. The domestic electronics were a guilty soft spot for most of the employees in our retail chain. I guess that's why Best Buy didn't carry them. It's how I'd ended up with the defective Pet, too.

I sighed again. Me and my soft heart. "I guess I'll be taking you home," I told my newest household electronic as I carefully scooped him up.

I got another hiss for my kindness.

END

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"Tiny!Formers Tarn" picture by Shibara AVAILABLE ON Ao3 (or her Tumblr username Shibara)

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**_[ A/N:_**_ It was suggested I do this as weekly updates. I don't know if I have that patience for that, since I have far too much of this written already, but it's not like I have a better idea. There's really no plot. It's just glimpses into a normal life populated with electrodomestics from the Transformers brand.**]**_


	2. Pt 2

**Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 2

**Warnings: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating: ** G

**Continuity: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division, Pharma, Scavengers, Bob the non-Insecticon

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

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"Look, there's two things you gotta keep in mind," Bob told me when I first brought Tarn home. "The Transformers brand is Ex-Pen-Siiiiiiive," he drew the word out to really emphasize it. "Seriously. They're not meant to be bought by retail minions like us. They're meant to be some rich guy's household appliance, not an apartment appliance. So, like, Tarn? Tarn's supposed to take over a big music collection. Organize it, set up music purchases, track down bands you're interested in, make playlists for your moods, and follow you around playing stuff for you. But you…"

"I've got a stereo." And CDs. My one MP3 player was the freebie my last job gave me at a raffle. It held 2 gigs of songs and was held together by tape and a rubber band because the back had fallen off. Tarn stared at it for a good ten minutes before figuring out how he could dock it without jostling the battery loose. He glared at me when he synced with the music inside. Apparently, my taste in music wasn't approved.

"Yeah, you've got a stereo. Do you even buy music online?"

"Sometimes?" I scratched my head a little uncomfortably. I liked my CDs, honestly, but overall? Music just wasn't a big deal for me. I listened to the radio online with my laptop if I wanted background noise. "Is that gonna be a problem?"

Bob shrugged. "No idea. That brand's good at adapting to their owners, but that's the other thing: D-line's not meant to be very interactive. A-line's the companion electronics. They're supposed to be interacted with. D-line's the appliances. They're supposed to be **used**, y'know? So sticking him in a small apartment with nothing to do's gonna screw up his priority list."

"English, man. Translate that to somebody who sells large appliances, not domestics."

"He's gonna get attached to you instead of your music collection." He gave me a shrewd look. "I know you, loser. You're gonna treat him like a pet."

"…is that bad?" Okay, so I might have walked out of the store cuddling Tarn the first night, despite the hissing and spitting and struggles to get free. Annnnnd I pretty much babytalked to him all the time. I just - the electrodomestics were just so darn cute! I couldn't ignore the one living with me.

"S'not bad, just means his function code's gonna get overwritten - "

"**English**."

" - fuck if I know what he's gonna do."

"Oh. Okay."

So I kept Bob's two things in mind when Tarn latched onto my pant leg and wouldn't let go. "I'm going to do laundry," I told him, "not buy more CDs." I'd finally relented and let him start burning all my CDs to my computer, but he still handled them like they were infectious.

I got a hiss. I assumed that meant he was coming with me anyway, just in case more CDs magically appeared in my laundry basket. Or he was just bored. My apartment really was kind of small. I couldn't expect a domestic electronic meant for a whole household to do nothing but sit around.

Who knows why he wanted to go on a laundry trip, but whatever. It wouldn't hurt him to get out of my place, even if it was just downstairs. If he wanted to run around under the stairs, more power to him.

I rolled my eyes at my tiny hitchhiker and hobbled toward the door, keeping my foot flexed so he could balance on top of it. I was getting used to walking with an attachment. It helped that Tarn was only, what, four inches tall? Five, if he was trying to intimidate me. I picked up my laundry basket and tromped down the stairs to the basement to shuffle clothes around. One wet load out of the washer, one dry load out of dryer, put in a new load in both and repeat. Ah, laundry day. Quarters, my kingdom for more quarters!

There were angry _vr-vrrm_ noises from under the pile of dry clothes I'd just taken out of the dryer. Oops. "Darnit, Tarnit! Get out of there!" I carefully dug down until little flailing hands were revealed. They batted me away, and Tarn struggled loose on his own.

Oh my God. Where the heck was my camera when this stuff happened? There were socks static-stuck to his treads.

"D'awww, lookit the widdle Tarn! Who's my widdle Tarn? Are you my widdle Tarn?" Me and my weakness for cute. I swooped down to pick him up for cuddles. He hissed and hit the side of my face with his fists, squirming until I finally lost my grip and let him back down.

He promptly transformed and rammed my foot in his tankmode, _vrr-vrrmm_ing furiously when I leaned against the washer and laughed my butt off at his antics. He managed to run up and over my toes, which might have hurt if he'd been, y'know, not palm-sized. My laughter seemed to offend him more. While I calmed down enough to stop laughing hysterically, he parked himself on top of my foot and revved his tiny engine at me. Knowing him, he was probably brooding and plotting revenge by sabotaging my stereo.

I kept my foot flexed and hitch-stepped back toward the stairs with my load of dry clothes. The angry engine-noises sputtered louder the further he was held from the floor. God, I was going to melt of cute overdose any day now.

There was still a sock stuck to him.

END

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**_[ A/N:_**_ Yay, trying for a week-ish update!**]**_


	3. Pt 3

**Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 3

**Warnings: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating: ** G

**Stage: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division, Pharma, Scavengers, Bob the non-Insecticon

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

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**Tuna sandwiches with Bob, or "Scavenging for food."**

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"So, how much can these guys adapt?" Misfire was attempting to throw sweet pickles down to Fulcrum. He was missing terribly. There were sweet pickles all over the counter and none on the cutting board. Fulcrum and Crankcase were glaring up at the flyer with their hands on their hips. I watched and made no effort to help at all. "I mean, Krok wasn't made to direct tuna fish sandwich making, was he?"

Bob looked up from putting the bread down where his bossy little taskmaster was pointing him. "Huh? Nah."

Looking up redirected Krok's attention as well, and the head of the Bob-mob beeped dismay at the mess his subordinate electronics were making. This was apparently not according to plan. Then again, I'd already thrown his dinner strategy out the window by showing up tonight. Improvised sandwich-making or not, Krok was getting somewhat frazzled.

Bob shrugged and set Krok down on the counter when the beeping got urgent enough. "He just kinda went from organizing my work schedule to making up my grocery list to picking out what meals I should make." He opened the plastic and shook the loaf of bread out. "I don't mind. It's easier than coming home and deciding what's for dinner myself, y'know?"

Krok had rounded the jar and now jumped up to grab Misfire by one thruster. The little fetch-and-carry chattered frantically and held onto the jar rim for dear life as he resisted being pulled down by his determined leader. Fulcrum and Crankcase were bitching at each other in binary as they kicked the scattered sweet pickles up onto the cutting board and cleaned up all the pickle juice.

I couldn't imagine Tarn making me a tuna fish sandwich. Maybe if it was laced with arsenic.

"Yeah, but I mean…did you teach them how to do it?" Spinister had landed by the bread and was successfully hacking it into slices with his rotor blades. I'd wondered why Bob bought unsliced bread. Huh. Mystery solved. "Cranky's a handyman aid, right?" Crankcase was currently engaged in sawing the pickles into slices with Fulcrum, the two 'bots working the knife lumberjack-style back and forth between them. He looked permanently pissed off, but he seemed to know what he was doing. "How'd he go from tightening up the crap under your sink to making food?"

I got an absentminded shrug in reply since Bob was more occupied trying to get the bread away from Spinister before it was reduced to crumbs. "Heck if I know. I think they kinda learned how to do shit just to survive living with me." He glanced around his kitchen, a little bemused. Krok had climbed up on the pickle jar to give Misfire a hand out, because the klutz had slipped and fallen in. The unfortunate bitty-'bot looked saddened and dismayed by his pickled fate. He sloshed around trying to catch Krok's hand. I was tempted to put the lid back on just to see what they'd do. "It's not like I need a bunch of expensive electronics that do just one dang thing. My place ain't that big."

Which was sort of why I'd asked in the first place. Having Tarn get bored seemed like a bad idea. "I wonder," I mused as I hooked my finger into the pickle jar and pulled Misfire out, "if I used pictures, think I could get Tarn's programming to associate cockroaches with CDs?" I plunked the teensy jet onto the counter, and he flapped his wings. Brine went everywhere. He promptly got smacked upside the head by Krok for spattering everything with pickle juice. "Like, every time I see a cockroach in my apartment, I'll buy a new CD?"

Bob's eyebrows shot up. "If you make that work, you're gonna have a roach massacre."

"Bet I can get him to go after spiders, too." I grinned. "I'll mark bug-free days down on a calendar and tell him I'll buy an IPod at 30 days or something."

Bob laughed. "Dude, you're getting a free IPod from the store for meeting the sales' goal!"

"Yeah, but he doesn't know that."

A cord flopped up onto the counter. Fulcrum froze, staring at it. I watched with interest. Bob followed my gaze and sighed. "Here we go again."

I suppose from a certain perspective, the end of a toaster does sort of look like a face. Especially when Spinister and Crankcase heaved together and the toaster followed the cord up onto the counter to clatter almost on top of Fulcrum. I'm sure from the poor guy's perspective it was like Cthulhu rising from the deeps. Cthulhu of the toasted bread and single electrical cord tentacle, coming to get one terrified electrodomestic.

Who promptly bolted, squeaking a shrill mechanical noise that translated to _'I don't wanna dieeeeee'_ in any language. My buddy rolled his eyes at me and went to save his stupid sentient Moka pot. "Fulcrum! Oh, for fuck's sake…Crumbs! Crumbs, shut it! It's not going to freakin' hurt you, ya stupid 'bot!"

Crankcase sniggered meanly as he hauled the toaster cord toward the outlet. Spinister watched Fulcrum panicking all over the place before shaking his head and stuffing bread slices into the toaster slots. I grinned and sort of regretted how Tarn's stiff sense of dignity was never going to let me chase him around my kitchen like that. Noisy Fulcrum might be, but dang was this funny. There was thumb-clinging going on, man. The tiny 'bot had all four limbs wrapped around Bob's thumb, and the most pathetic pair of pleading yellow optics I'd ever seen kept peeking around it to warily stare at the toaster as if it'd attack any moment.

Bob rolled his eyes at me again and started trying to pry the little guy off.

Krok and Misfire were pushing at the hip I'd leaned against the counter. They seemed to be trying to navigate me toward the cans of tuna Flywheels was airlifting from the cupboard. To their optics, apparently, I was the newest appliance in Bob's kitchen. Very large can opener was I.

Eh. It's a living.

END

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**_[ A/N:_**_ Yay, trying for a week-ish update!**]**_


	4. Pt 4

**Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 4

**Warnings: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating: ** G

**Continuity: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division, Pharma, Scavengers, Bob the non-Insecticon

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

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A month with Tarn, and I'd stopped buying CDs entirely. He pitched the world's most adorable little fits any time I brought a new one home, but I'd also caught him trying to put my stereo on CraigsList. I guess that's what you get for giving a moody electrodomestic with a superiority complex access to all your stuff. He kept bookmarking music sites on my browser, too. I'd say he wanted me to take the hint, but what with the time I found him hauling my credit card out of my wallet, I think it was more of a threat.

So I threatened him back. I told him I'd call the Cybertron registry and find the nearest owner of a Megatron unit. According to Tarn's packaging, the D.J.D models utterly worshiped the D-line's flagship model unit. Household tyranny, microsized and made _reeeeeeally_ expensive. God, that price-tag. I'd have promised Tarn I'd buy him one if he behaved except it'd take four months pay. And what would I do with him if I bought him, anyway?

Borrowing, however, I could do. I was fairly sure I could find someone nice enough to let me tote my little menace over for the entertainment factor, if nothing else. The other option was to find a store that actually carried that model and bring Tarn there. The display models at my store were fairly obliging, so I figured a Megatron display model might listen if I explained on my domestic electronic was getting uppity.

Threatening to get Megatron to scold him for me got 15 minutes of total silence while my evil electrodomestic tried to figure out if I was being serious. I'd never seen Tarn at a loss before. It looked like a war between sheer spazzy fanbot excitement over possibly meeting his idol - seriously, as soon as I brought up the Cybertron registry and picked out Megatron's name, he clutched his hands to his face and looked like he was going to faint - and complete horror that he'd gone against the wishes of his household leader. The idea of being told off by the Megatron unit went smack up against his innate confidence that he was doing The Right Thing.

I left him sitting on my laptop staring at the Megatron owner contact list, but I pulled up my e-mail on another tab and wrote a nice letter, ready to send. He kept looking between the screen and the hated stereo for at least 10 minutes. The other five minutes were spent deleting my letter and typing fanmail to send instead.

It was in binary. I was really tempted to translate it, but since the attached MP3 was Whitney Houston's _'I Will Always Love You'_…

Uh. Yeah. I decided not to. But I made him read it again half an hour later before agreeing to send it, and he just sort of looked flustered and deleted it before going to lurk under the bed for a while. I think it was for the best I hadn't read it. Maybe saved it for blackmail, but not read it.

Tarn seemed to take the warning seriously, at least, so I didn't have to fear for my stereo anymore. I hoped.

Just in case, I decided not to push it. With my luck, the overzealous fanbot would decide he really did want to meet Megatron face-to-face, even if he was getting scolded. So, no more CDs. All the ones I already had got burned onto my computer, and most of them didn't even get scratched once I figured out that's what my horrid tiny monster was trying next. He's so annoying sometimes. Cute, yeah, but a friggin' pain in the ass.

That did leave me with 10 CDs scratched to hell, however.

I got over being pissed about it pretty quick. "Hey. Hey, Tarn. Darnit Tarnit, lookit!" I waggled a CD as my electrodomestic looked over the top of my laptop at me. The aura of _'Why do you bother me, mere mortal?'_ changed almost immediately. He saw the CD, and his beady red optics lit right up. "You want the CD? You want it?"

Hiss hiss. Hisssssss.

I leaned against the wall and grinned as he all but tumbled off the desk in his eagerness to destroy his enemy. "What, this? You want this?"

Tiny hands latched onto my pant leg. I waggled the CD again, and he wriggled, head bobbing and weaving to follow it. The hissing sounded happy and sinister at the same time. Probably only snake owners would understand what that sounded like.

The CD went winging across the apartment to skid under the couch. I was getting good at indoor Frisbee.

_Vrrrrm!_ Tarn transformed and took off, engine growling in the cutest murderous aggression ever as he trundled after the disc.

I kept leaning against the wall, smiling a bit. If he was bored enough, he'd bring it back to me. Fetch, played destroy-the-CD style. If not, well, I'd get to watch him jump up and down on it until it broke. Either way, I was amused.

I hated to say it, but CDs were more fun this way.

END

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**_[A/N:_**_ Yay, trying for a week-ish update! Poor Tarn. He would have been all kinds of embarrassed by sending Megatron Feelings!mail. XD **]**_


	5. Pt 5

**Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 5

**Warnings: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating: ** G

**Continuity: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division, Pharma, Scavengers, Bob the non-Insecticon

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

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You know how your laptop's supposed to be kept from being really cold or really hot? Yeah? Keep in mind that most domestic electronics were small. None of them have a whole lot of room for fans and whatnot in their teensy bodies to regulate temperatures for their CPUs. Their AI chips were actually more sensitive to cold than warmth, however, because of something to do with how little heat they generated on their own. As compared to how big and cold the world was, really. There was always a flock of domestic electronics basking under the lamps in the desk appliances aisle on cold winter days in the store, and the opening shift had at least three per cashier burrowed into their shirt pockets and - before the doors opened to customers, at least - nestled in bras on winter mornings before the heater kicked in. Everyone took turns with the Rung display model in their shirts, because he had that self-affirmation mode where he played back all the positive things he'd ever recorded when you looked tired or depressed. Having someone earnestly trying to cheer you up was a nice way to start out a cold day in retail.

Anyway, to put it bluntly, electrodomestics were heat-seekers.

Now, me? I liked it cold. I was cheap, too, so I turned the thermostat waaaaay down and just put on another sweater.

This was how I woke up with a tiny tank underneath the covers with me, a few mornings after taking home a certain returned appliance. He was sleeping between my feet. It only took a few minutes search on the Internet to find out this wasn't abnormal, and I couldn't blame him considering the low heat-output thing. My apartment gets _cold_ at night, man, and I don't have a bra. He's just lucky I grew up with cats, because having a little engine purring in bed with me wasn't much different. Just grumpier about being snuggled.

Now, I told you all _that_ in order to explain why I was carrying an electrodomestic around in a bright lavender mitten. Because I might not be much of a macho guy, but geez, give me some credit. _I_ wouldn't wear the thing. I mean, it was a bit small for my hands. Anyway, I only had one thumb.

I worried, okay? So, yeah, I went out to the JC Penny baby department and picked out the first winterwear set that wasn't frikkin' pink or blue. Lavender! Lavender's like a pastel purple, right? Purple was good. Purple matched Tarn. I just had to cut off the dumb yellow ducky motifs on them. I like cute and all, but I didn't want to be murdered in my sleep.

Tarn liked the scarf, baby-purple or not. I cut it in half length-wise and got Bob to get Crankcase to tie all the ends off, and viola! Electrodomestic-sized scarf. Tarn nested in the thing when I wasn't home, which was how I managed to be king of the breakroom the day after sneaking into the apartment and taking a dozen pictures of a tiny tank half-buried as he snoozed away. There's just something about a bitty tank in a pile of knitted pastel purple that had the cashiers and me - dude, at least I admit it - cooing over the cuteness.

As much as Tarn liked the scarf, the mittens were Teh Bomb so far as he was concerned. Crankcase managed to pick open the seams on the pinkie-sides and knot all the loose ends to make one mondo-mitten pouch thing, complete with the string that's supposed to go through the baby's coat to keep the mittens from getting lost. I tied those strings to my belt, viola! One Tarn carry-pouch, ready to go.

He loved that. I mean, he still hissed and pretended to ignore me when I was getting ready to go somewhere, but I could feel his beady little optics watching. If I took the mitten off the keyhook, he was _all_ over me suddenly. I took the hint if I found the pouch in front of the door when I came in, too. It didn't take much to keep him happy, really. Some credit at the Apple music store online, a game of Maul-the-CD once and a while, and occasionally taking him for walkies. I could just tuck him in his pouch and walk down to the corner convenience store for milk, and he was good.

I liked it, too. I've always been a social guy, so having company when I went places was kind of fun. He peered over the frilly purple top of his pouch and softly hissed commentary to me on at everything he saw. He played me music while I walked, which was cool. Not as good as headphones in a crowd, but nothing beat Tarn for making random friends on the subway. I'd picked up more buddies in the last month than in half my life just by letting him out to roam laps and imperiously demand MP3 players for inspection.

I had to rescue those he judged unacceptable. Little 'bot was brutal on country music lovers.

Nothing could possibly beat out today's trip, however. Today, Tarn's most hated enemy was being taken to the consignment shop. He met me at the door towing his mitten, scarf trailing out behind him like Superman's cape on casual Friday.

"Alright, already," I told him. "Geez. Gimme a second to put my stuff down and get the gorram stereo!"

He _vr-vrrm_ed impatiently as I did so. I checked my 'fridge - empty - and resolved to get Burger King on the way back. Putting the King's paper crown on Tarn was going to be my revenge on him for playing applause and laugh tracks when the dang stereo started skipping.

We got out the door, and he hissed self-satisfaction the whole way to the shop. Evil little bastard. It totally wouldn't surprise me if he'd somehow gotten into the CD player and messed with it, but honestly? I'd been thinking about getting rid of it just because he made such a fuss.

The guy at the consignment shop even asked about it. "You sure? Sounds like the spindle bearing's off, but that's fixable." He looked in the slot. "Wipe off the lens, probably."

"I figure you can do it and resell it. I've got him to deal with, so I'm set with music." I jerked my thumb at Tarn, who'd tumbled out of his carry-pouch and gone wandering the shop as soon as I decided it was safe. The guy looked over, snorted, and nodded. He went back to testing the stereo.

I kept an eye on Tarn. He stayed up on the counters and in sight, which were my only stipulations for letting him out in stores. I worried a bit about people trying to steal him, but the one person who'd tried on the subway hadn't done more than put him in a bag before Tarn started blasting _Aladdin_ music on repeat. You know that one song with the guard yelling, _"Stop, thief!"_? Yeah. That one.

Right now, he was playing -

I coughed and walked over before he upped the volume any further. "Right, I'm here. Turn it off!" '_Attention Whore'_ by DeadMau5 shut off before it could offend anyone. "What'd you find? Oh."

There was an electrodomestic inside the case. He was just sitting there between the old headphones and a PS2, elbows on his knees and shoulders slumped. There were little Tesla coils on those shoulders, although I couldn't tell what he transformed into. I squinted but couldn't read his tag. Tarn tapped determinedly on the glass countertop, but the other domestic electronic was so listless he didn't even look up. Poor 'bot probably hadn't been let out of the case in a while.

"What's this one do?" I called over to the shop guy.

He squeezed through all the junk to go behind the counter. "I'll give you thirty bucks for the stereo," he told me as he reached in the case and grabbed the electrodomestic. "Ow! Sonnuvabitch zapped me!" Scowling, he turned the tag dangling from one leg over and read it. "Huh, okay, that'd be why. Broken wireless internet router," he said, handing over the limp 'bot. "Careful. He's got something wrong, so he shocks people. Zappo!"

"Yow!"

"Warned you."

"Yeah, gotcha." Shit, that'd hurt my frikking _bones_. I shook my stinging hand, transferring him to my other hand to put on the counter beside Tarn. "Here - whoa, where are his optics?" I flattened the tag on the glass and read. Broken wireless internet router domestic electronic; electrical problem burnt out his optics, but he was otherwise functional. Crippled but working? Why hadn't anyone gotten him fixed? Must have been a model glitch. I could probably look it up when I got home.

Transformers brand, Kaon, D-line. "Huuuuh," I said slowly, looking at Tarn poking at the other electrodomestic. Kaon was twitching, drawing in on himself and frowning. "No wonder you're interested. Justice Division model, just like you."

Tarn hissed aggressively, looming over the other D.J.D., and Kaon responded by shrinking down on the glass. Crap, I felt bad for him. How long had he been stuck in that case by himself? Nobody probably wanted him if his model had been recalled for an electrical malfunction. He made a little sound like - aww, what the heck? That was adorable. He made the old dial-up internet connection noise!

I looked up from the small-scale bullying and glanced across the shop at my stereo. I was here to sell it, not fret about a busted electrodomestic nobody would ever take home and would eventually end up dusty and powered down, forgotten in this case until he was scrapped for parts to fix other 'bots.

…nope. Not here for that at all. Stereo. Right. "$30 seems low."

"It's old."

"Don't give me that. It's, like, two years old."

"That's ancient for electronics." The miniature drama unfolding between us got a pointed look. "Anyway, I'd have to repair it."

"You could sell it for a lot more than that," I argued.

Suddenly, there was a loud _ping-ping-ZAP_, and I swore loudly as the metal frame of the glass countertop zinged me. Tarn's bossy engine noises turned to a startled, high-pitched _hiss-hiss-hiss_ing. When I stopped shaking my hands, I looked down and saw Tarn flat on his back, flailing with all four limbs as Kaon sat upright. When Tarn got himself turned back over, he gave the smaller electrodomestic what I could only interpret as a respectful nod.

Kaon smiled slightly, and there was a smug dial-up tone. He looked a lot happier.

I sighed as Tarn looked up at me and pointed determinedly. '_That one!'_

Well, fuck me. Me and my friggin' soft heart.

"How about a trade?" the shop guy suggested, smirking as he watched the byplay.

I did sort of have two scarves already…

* * *

END

* * *

**_[ A/N:_**_ Joe. Joe, you are going to end up with a herd. Joe, stop.__**]**_


	6. Pt 6

**Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 6

**Warnings: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating: ** G

**Continuity: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Chromedome, Rewind, Blurr

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Christ, what are we supposed to do about this?"

I slowed down, wondering what the heck had brought Carl to the domestic electronics' aisle. He and Bob were leaning on the inventory counter looking at something, and Bob had that helpless grin he had when somebody just got suckerpunched by adorable.

I knew better, but I doubled back and walked over. Coffee could wait. "'Sup, guys - " I started casually, but then I saw what they were looking at. Suckerpunch. Adorable. Bam. " - no. No. Bob!" He was supposed to have my back on this stuff, the bastard. Ow! Ow! Emotional pain, fucktard!

"I didn't do it!" he protested, but the shit-eating grin didn't go away. I swear he enjoyed watching people get blindsided by his aisle full of electronic miniature minions. "Trust me, this's **all** management's fault. **Somebody**," meaningful, humorous grin aside at our manager, who had a hand over his eyes as he tried to block out the knock-out cute in front of him, "thought it'd be a good idea to get some use out of our dumb-customer accident. He gave Rewind to the Troubles, and **this** is whatcha get."

_'Dumbass,'_ was heavily implied, if not spoken aloud. I added my silent voice to the chorus. God, Carl. Even I knew that was a bad idea. Electrodomestics imprinted quickly.

Okay, take it back about a week ago, when some moron of a teenager opened an electrodomestic package on the salesfloor. Seriously, who the heck opened items before purchase in an appliance store? Didn't help that Bob was on break, leaving Tim to cover two departments. It's always hard keeping an eye on people over in another department. So this kid grabbed one of the smallest dang packages in the entire aisle and just...opened it. Like, what the hell?

Half the demo models ran for help from the cashiers and Tim. They knew the theft drill, although this was a bit out of their league. The cashiers can spot a theft-alert across the store by now, but opening a package had them demo models confused as to what to do. Blurr scared the crap out the breakroom by screeching in right under Mandy's feet and writing in pencil on her ankle. In binary, which wasn't very helpful but did get across that Bob needed to get his ass back on the salesfloor.

Meanwhile, the other half of the demo models were trying to stop this stupid kid. Who didn't just open the package, oh no. Nope, the jerk went and activated the electrodomestic inside before Bob could stop him. He gave some lame excuse about wanting to see what it was and got out of the store before we could charge him for the product.

Shithead.

Not that I'd wish that brat on Rewind. There's a reason we didn't have any of the Minibot-size models from the Transformer brand out for demo models. They were frickin' _tiny, _man. Rewind's some kinda multi-terrabyte memory stick, and just like a regular memory stick these days, he was about the size of my thumbpad. That kid would have probably sat on him and never noticed the _crunch_.

Which left us with an open package, activated Transformers brand domestic electronic. We couldn't really stuff him back in the package to sell. Who knew how long he'd be stuck in there before he finally sold? And with the package open, the company wouldn't take him back.

Apparently, Carl's solution while we waited for confirmation that the company for sure wouldn't take Rewind back was to give the little guy to the computer repair services desk we've got in the corner of the store. The Trouble Troop didn't do a lot of business, but they're pretty good at all kinds of finicky mechanical repairs. They're the ones who got Kaon to work with my Internet service, so I'm probably obligated to say they're better than they likely are.

But even I knew that giving Rewind to them was the wrong idea. Not because of the Troubles - nice guys, if weird and prone to wearing horn-rimmed glasses - but because of Chromedome.

Chromedome was a harddrive scanner from the A-line group. He'd been working with the Trouble Troop since before Bob came to the store, on both regularly computers and domestic electronics of all brands. He got depressed really easily. Part of it's because, dang, he spent most of his time troubleshooting other robots' brains. That's got to suck. To make it worse, the Transformer brand kept threatening to discontinue scanner update for his model, which would make him obsolete fairly quickly. So he got kind of mopey, because he hated his job.

Bob warned me about him. The Troubles warned me about him. I still didn't believe it until I brought my group of holy terrors in and he barely reacted. Well, no, he did react. Swear to God, I thought he was trying to get the Pet to eat him. It made me want to take him home and see if he'd be happier away from the store, but - no. He was really good at his job. The Troubles weren't going to let me take him home.

Enter one idiot customer and a bad management call, however, and Chromedome got paired up with Rewind. Which sort of explained why Chromedome was now standing in front of us on the counter, earnestly staring up at Carl while hugging Rewind to his chest like a teddybear.

I glared at Bob. Low blow of cute, man.

"Is he still looking at me?" Carl asked from under the hand he'd covered his eyes with.

"Yeah," Bob confirmed, still grinning away.

"Oh, God, I can't look. Can you just...separate them? I've got the tag. We can just put him in the packaging and," he waved his other hand toward the front of the store, "put him on discount. He'll sell in a day. Two, tops."

Chromedome bleeped mournfully and squeezed Rewind harder. The tinier electrodomestic kicked his legs and squirmed until he could angle his head up at us and - was that a camera? Was he filming this?

Well, geez. No wonder Carl was putting him back up for sale. I didn't want to know what even the discount price was. A memory stick with a built-in, teensy camera guaranteed that it was out of my buying range.

More's the pity. Because right now? I'd totally buy the midget appliance for Chromedome. That little visor was giving Carl the most pathetic look I'd ever seen. The bigger electrodomestic backed away, shaking his head and hugging Rewind tighter. Rewind clamped the teensiest little fingers you've ever seen around Chromedome's arm and held on just as stubbornly.

"You gonna let him go?" Bob asked Chromedome. There was a sad _bleep-bloop_. "He'll go to a good home. Discount doesn't mean cheap, honest."

"Carl." I nudged my manager, unable to look away. That _visor_, dude. Argh. My heart. "Carl. Carl, look. Carl, come on. Carl!" Carl kept his eyes shaded, looking away. I couldn't do the same. Bob gently pried at Chromedome's hands. Rewind put his arms up and tried to push the comparatively giant fingertips away. "Carl! C'mon, this ain't cool."

_Bleep-bloooooop._

"I'm not sayin' nothin'," Bob said over his shoulder, but he was frowning. Tiny fists beat at his fingertips, and Chromedome's little bleeps were breaking into panicked, high-pitched, and static-filled noises.

_Blee-eeee-ee-ee-eeeep! Bleee-ee-eeeee-eep!_

The scanner electrodomestic lost his grip, and one arm peeled free. Rewind scrambled after his arm, trying to hold on, but Bob had more experience handling bitty 'bots than Chromedome did. Rewind was gently slid out of the other appliance's protective hug.

All but for their hands. Both domestic electronics clung to each others hands even as Bob lifted Rewind up. Chromedome's heels skidded across the counter until he was lifted half off the counter by his desperate hold on Rewind.

_EEEeeeeEEEEeee-ee-ee-eeEEEeeeEEE!_

"Fuck," Carl said heavily. He had his hand over his eyes, still, but nothing could block out Chromedome's shrill, begging bleeps of sound. "Why the heck's he making that **sound**?"

"Because we don't sell the demo models," Bob sighed, shaking his head. "I told ya, man. We just don't do it. They imprint, and that's the end of it." He flicked his forefinger against the tiny mechs' hands, and they popped loose. Bob scooped Rewind into the palm of his hand and cupped both hands around him to keep him from falling while trying to get back to the larger electrodomestic.

Chromedome immediately dropped to his knees on the counter with a despairing _bleeeeoop_ whimper. He crawled to the edge of the counter, looking between Bob's hands and Carl's hidden face. He bleeped pitifully. Inside Bob's hands, I could see that Rewind had collapsed, teeny-weeny fists pressed helplessly against skin.

Y'know, Tarn's asked me for a lot of stuff. More like he demanded. There was lots of pointing and hissing at me. I think I preferred it like that. If he ever looked at me like this, I'd give him anything he ever wanted. Talk about a punch to the gut.

Carl was trying to be stoic and professional. He fumbled out a discount tag while I picked up Chromedome, who squirmed and reached pleading hands toward Bob.

Bob just looked into his own hands and shook his head. "He'll get returned. What looks worse on the store report: moron customer we caught on security camera, or defective product being sold by bullheaded manager?"

Carl hesitated.

"Who've we got doing the filming for the YouTube channel?" I asked suddenly. The store had a YouTube channel for weekly sales and promotions and whatnot. Our chain demanded it. Nobody gave a crap about it, because none of us dabbled much outside our own departments.

Bob caught on quick. "The Troubles."

"They suck."

"You're telling me? We feature two models a week, but I never see my aisle up there." He jerked his head down the aisle. It was conspicuously clear of demo models, probably because Chromedome was still shrieking miserable _bleee-ee-eep_s in my hands. "If we just had someone around to interview the demo models and get them proper attention..."

Carl glared at us both sourly. "Yeah, 'someone.' Ha ha. So subtle."

Chromedome wailed. _Bleeeeep!_

The shmuck had moved his hand to glare at us. Ha. This time, he had to see the poor little guys trying to reach for each other.

It was like watching an egg crack. Hard-ass one minute, gooey insides all over the next.

"Goddamit," he snarled, stuffing the discount tag back in his pocket. "You," he snapped, pointing a finger into Bob's hands, "make that YouTube channel **awesome**, or I'm putting a $5 sticker on you and calling it quits." Rewind shrank down in Bob's hands, visor huge and...pffft. Camera still rolling. If this ended up on the YouTube channel, it'd be so worth it.

"You," Carl went after Chromedome this time, who looked more elated than intimidated, "help him. And improve the attitude!"

With that, our tough-guy manager of the secret mushy heart spun on his heel and stormed off down the aisle. Bob and I grinned after him.

That was all a really long way of explaining why every Friday after closing, we got a weekly ten-minute 'movie night' when Rewind updated the YouTube channel. It usually had us all in stitches. Not all of the updates stayed up for more than an hour before Carl axed them, but our store's YouTube channel was the best dang YouTube channel in the whole frickin' chain, dammit. Videos made from the perspective of a guy an inch tall were just fun to watch. Plus, the adventures of a pint-sized electrodomestic sneaking through our store made our channel view hits go waaaay up.

Every Friday, Carl shook his fist and declared Rewind safe for another week in melodramatic villain style. _'I'll get you, my pretty, and your little memory stick, too!'_

And every Friday, Chromedome bleeped rudely back at him from where he sat on one of the registers, tiny electrodomestic hugged safely in his lap. Rewind wasn't going anywhere.

Not unless there was a Chromedome stowaway right there with him.

END

* * *

**_[ A/N:_**_ Someone came into the writing chat and demanded I write Chromedome and Rewind. Hence, this. __**]**_


	7. Pt 7

**Title: **Domestic Electronics

**Warning: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating: ** G

**Stage: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division, Pharma, Scavengers, Bob the non-Insecticon

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

* * *

**[* * * * *] **

* * *

I didn't know crap about domestic electronics, I openly admitted that. I mean, I got the first two for free. I didn't intend to get them, you know? Ask me about a refrigerator or an oven, and I can talk for days about the best kind for your home. Big appliances are things you research and invest in. Electrodomestics? Got me. They were all tiny and cute and finicky, like little computers with adaptable personalities. Washing machines didn't have personalities.

It was less like researching an expensive new appliance than getting a feral pet who happened to be an A.I. shoved on me. It didn't help that none of mine came with their user manuals.

For the most part, it didn't matter how much I knew. The Pet took care of itself. I just picked up a bottle of dishwashing liquid once a month and wrestled it down to refill its perpetually leaky reservoirs. It pawed my knee and chewed on my shoes when there were dirty dishes, so I learned to give it them. Worked out pretty good, too. I left dishes out, and I got cleaned dishes. I also got soap drooled all over the kitchen linoleum, but I bought up one of those sponge-mops a while back. My kitchen floor sparkled, man.

Tarn was harder to get used to because, uh, I kept treating him like a pet. I know, I know, he was mechanical and hooked into my laptop regularly. That didn't stop him from being adorable.

Bob kept giving me exasperated looks whenever I mentioned Tarn's newest adventures battling socks or whatever, and he eventually lectured me into submission. I started researching some stuff about what made electrodomestics tick.

Some people loved them, some people thought they were stupid, some people thought they're about to go Terminator on us all. I could sort of understand the concern. If Tarn was any bigger, I'd worry about world domination. Vehicular homicide, at the least. I'd stopped counting how many times I'd almost stepped on him trundling around in the apartment in tank mode. Apparently, no one else _ever_ has the right of way.

As it was, I just worried about him trying to kill other electrodomestics. Apparently the Justice Division D-line models had a, uh, reputation.

Bob told me about it, because he's got one of the List collector models. Those are supposed to be the ones in the most danger, or so he was warned when he picked up his loser. That should have been enough warning, right?

But we both have a bad habit of treating our respective appliances like pets. Yes, both of us. Bob shakes his head at me about cuddling my guys, but I get texts at all hours of the day saying stuff like, _*asdlfkjLOOKATTHIS*_ with a picture of Misfire nesting on top of Fulcrum in jet mode. Bob's scavenged group of rejects is like the LOLcats of electrodomestics. It's hard to watch them being little idiots while throwing handfuls of mayonnaise at each other and think of them as hardwired for anything but acting like doofuses.

So I figured that, hey, Tarn had adjusted pretty well to killing cockroaches instead of maintaining a huge digital music collection. I'd even trained him for outside the apartment. I mean, as much as he allowed himself to be trained. He was sort of like a cat, that way. I could take him out for walkies in his tank mode, but nobody who ever saw us go down the street was going to mistake the way he was pulling against the puppy leash I fastened on his turrets. I was the one being led around. It was even more obvious when he was in his travel pouch, because probably anybody who saw us saw me looking down at Tarn as he hissed and pointed to where I should walk next.

I was okay with that. I've always had cats, and the more of those, the merrier. I didn't want Tarn or Kaon to be lonely or bored, and being well-socialized seemed like a good idea. I really just wanted to be able to leave my guys at Bob's place if I had to go away. It didn't seem like a bad plan to try and socialize my two with other domestic electronics in case I had to leave them with a bot-sitter.

I mean, they'd adapted to each other easily enough. Kaon's another D.J.D. so it could have been a group thing, but I thought it was more of a D-line thing. They fought a few times, but as much as Tarn bossed the blind 'bot all around the apartment, he seemed to like Kaon. I caught him helping the little router up onto the back of the couch to get a better wireless signal.

Kaon himself was an agreeable guy. I liked him, except for the zapping. He was cuddlier than Tarn, but that might have been _because_ of the zapping. I still couldn't tell if he intentionally crawled under the covers to curl up on my stomach at night as a punishment for something, or just because he was cold. Either way - ow. Getting an electric snap while sleeping sucked.

Eh, who was I fooling? They were both evil. But really cute, and adjusting to living in a small apartment. I was okay with evil. I'd had cats.

Bob and I decided to try introducing them to other appliances. Bob had done it plenty of times before with his mob. According to him, there'd be a lot of running and hiding, then dominance fights over the electrical outlets, and finally somebody would come out as the head of the pack. Krok had established himself as that early on and thumped the newbies into line as they arrived. Appliance pecking order would be determined by usefulness from there on down.

Since I didn't want lots of fights (and I liked espresso), we decided that Fulcrum should be our test subject. His arrival at Bob's place had apparently been a quick meet-n-greet before the little Moka pot figuratively rolled over and submitted to everyone. He didn't do confrontations well. He stayed at the bottom of the hierarchy and seemed happy there. Considering what a coward he was, we doubted he'd do any differently with Tarn and Kaon.

It started really well. Bob brought Fulcrum over, tucked into his coat. I opened the door, and all I could see were these ultra-timid yellow optics peeking over his coat zipper. There were little fingers clutching the fabric. The bitty-'bot looked scared, but not panicked.

"I'm kinda surprised he survived the subway ride." I wagged two fingers in greeting at the little guy. I got an uncertain stare in return. "Come on in."

"He hid in my scarf under my chin," Bob said, trying to look down at his passenger. "Not a peep outta him."

I'd sort of expected a tale of shrieking and woe, so that was a pleasant surprise. Not as exciting, but better than expected. "Cool. Alright. Tarn!" When last seen, my home disasters were causing havoc in the kitchen. Kaon had been patiently holding dishes for the Pet to clean, and Tarn had been knocking clean silverware onto the floor. "Tarn, come meet Fulcrum!"

There was an eager _vrrrm!_, and a tiny tank zoomed into the living room. He transformed and jumped onto my foot. There was impatient tugging upon my jeans, as well as much hissing at me. _'Pick me up, mortal man. Why must you be so slow? You give the rest of the furniture a bad name.'_

"I swear, I think he's been looking forward to this," I told Bob, bending to pick up my dude. "He was staking out the door when I got home today."

My buddy, in the meantime, was trying to wrestle Fulcrum out of the safety of his coat. The little Moka pot had latched on to the inside and seemed to be trying to hide in the armhole. "Aw, come **on**, Crumbs. It's Joe. You like Joe!" Bob had both hands in his own armpit, trying to pick teensy fingers loose from a seam. There was much rustling and kicking of small feet as Fulcrum protested mightily. "And Tarn. You haven't even **met** Tarn yet. Maybe you'll like him! Geez. Were you this bad when I brought you home to meet the others? No. No no no, get out of there - "

There was a Fulcrum-sized lump determinedly inching down Bob's arm in the sleeve. Bob poked and prodded it, trying to scoot it back toward his body. When that failed, he dropped his arm down and shook it, trying to force Fulcrum down and out of his coat entirely. "Fulcrum! Get out of there!"

See, this? This was closer to what'd I'd expected to hear about how the subway ride went. Tarn just stood on my hand and leaned back against me, watching. For once, he was being polite. Not even a hiss. He looked interested in all the fuss, but he was just waiting patiently. To look at him, you'd think he was a civilized appliance who didn't jump on my groin in the middle of the night because I didn't let him buy every song on his wishlist.

The bastard.

I resisted the urge to hug him, because that'd guarantee a bad first impression.

Eventually, Bob shook Fulcrum out of his sleeve. Fulcrum scrambled, trying to climb back up his wrist, but Bob had his hand cupped so the little coward plopped straight down into it. There was flailing, but Bob managed to turn him around and lift him up to be face-to-face with Tarn.

"Okay, you little bit-head, this's Tarn - "

That's approximately when electronic Hell broke loose.

Long story short? The D.J.D. really _didn't_ play well with others. Especially not electrodomestics on the List. It's hard-coded way beneath anything their adaptation abilities could change. Which, I found after we'd pried Tarn off Fulcrum and Bob left to try and calm the poor 'bot down before he fried something important, I could have learned pre-attempted mauling by spending two minutes on the Cybertron registry forums. Oops. Turned out that D.J.D. models will actually kill List models. Messily, in fact. There were pictures. Tarn sat in my lap and clapped approval of each one.

"You're worse than my mom's cats," I told him. They used to disembowel chipmunks and leave them in our garage to be stepped on. From the hissing when I told him about it, Tarn found this idea intriguing. Ugh. Good thing I didn't have a mouse problem.

Since Fulcrum's near-end served to illustrate how much I _didn't_ know about electrodomestics, I spent the weekend researching. I'd spent too long comparing Tarn and Kaon to cats. I knew how to care for cats. I didn't have a clue what to do with the exotic what's-its I'd been handed.

Fortunately, the Internet came to my rescue. The Transformer forums taught me much. Like how strange Bob and I were for having expensive, rich-person home appliance toys wandering about in our small apartments. Most of the posts for the D-line were from the rich-people's maids and personal assistants. Daaaaang. And here I had three of them.

I'd done everything wrong, according to the forums. The D-line electrodomestics were supposed to be impersonal little job-oriented semi-sentient workers. The A-line companion electronics were apparently more personable, but they still weren't _pets_.

I spent about half an hour watching the Transformer brand commercials for their latest models. It was actually kind of eerie how, er, mechanical the domestic electronics in the commercials all were. Even the demo models at the store were more...well, friendly. Outgoing. Okay, yeah, that's because they were handled frequently and meant to sell their model types, but still. Seemed kind of weird that nobody was hitting the selling point of these guys being, y'know. Fun to have.

I decided I preferred my dudes demanding and miniaturized evil instead of machine-like. Maybe I was just weird and terminally weak when given cute things.

So I ignored most of the advice on the forums and browsed for stuff I thought was more relevant. The maintenance forums turned out to be the most useful. Oh ho ho. Hello, there, minor detail. Thank you, SassyMaid403, for your contribution to my evening.

"Oh, Tarn," I crooned when I'd finished reading her posts. "Where are you, Tarn?"

Tarn, of course, took off running.

I could have chased him. There could have been an epic chase around and under furniture throughout the apartment, upsetting the Pet and probably overturning the couch again. It wouldn't be the first time I'd had to hunt him down. It was turning into a tradition on mornings I was running late for work. He had an annoying habit of playing MC Hammer's _'U Can't Touch This'_ while zipping around just out of reach with my I-Pod still docked. Usually while dragging my phone, too.

I wasn't late for work, however, and I knew how to get Tarn out of hiding. All I had to do was pay attention to someone who wasn't Tarn. He was a territorial little devil.

"Kaooooon. C'mere, zapster." Kaon tilted his head, giving me an inquisitive, optic-less look from the foot of the bed where he'd been perched. He tended to stick close when I was using the Internet to make sure I got the best wireless available. Evil he might be, but he took his job seriously.

Well, time for a reward. "Polishing time, dude!" I swooped down and picked him up, accepting the electric shock I got in return. Cuddling Kaon was proof that I could get used to anything in the name of cute. "Who's a good 'bot? **That's** my good 'bot."

Look, I really couldn't stop the babytalk sometimes, alright? The electrodomestics in the store were used to it. Kaon still scrunched up his face when I started in on him. From the look of him, he was trying to resign himself to my stupidity. Tarn hit me when I started '_aboogieboogieboo'_ing at him, but Tarn wasn't here right now, so Tarn couldn't protest.

My better-behaved appliance sat in my hands and continued not-looking up at me as I gathered all the necessary stuff mentioned in the forum posts. Towels? Check. Windex? Check. Warm water and dishwashing soap probably wasn't the best idea considering whom I was washing, but I carried him into the kitchen to fill the sink anyway. Working at the kitchen table would probably be best, anyway.

"Don't worry, it's not for you," I whispered when Kaon stiffened at the sound of water running.

That got me a conspiratorial grin. Ah. Yup. Kaon really was as evil as Tarn. He just covered it more.

I carefully spritzed the towel and started in on him. He squirmed at first, but wow. The maintenance forum? Was totally right. For the price of a few painful shocks, I had a puddle of electrodomestic after the first going-over. Kaon laid draped over my left hand as I used the towel wrapped around my pinkie to get between the coils on his shoulders.

By the second time through when I was just rubbing him with the towel to get the last of the Windex residue off him and really shine him up, there was a continuous faint screeping noise, like dial-up heard in the distance. When I finally decided I was finished, Kaon sprawled blissfully in my lap in very happy recharge. A finger stroked down his back got a teensy sigh and little fists opening and closing on my jeans. He screeped a bit in protest when I gently moved him to the couch, but I tucked his scarf around him. He curled up and went back to smiling without ever fully coming online.

God, these things were so cute.

Polishing Kaon up worked like a charm, too. Paying attention to anything but my jealous leader of the household electronics set Tarn off like you wouldn't believe. I'd held Kaon safely out of reach, but the whole time we'd been sitting in the kitchen, Tarn had been pitching a fit on the floor. He'd _vrm-vrrrm_ed angrily under the chair, trying to get my attention. I'd ignored him repeatedly nudging my foot in his tank mode. He'd given up after half an hour and transformed to cling to my ankle, all resentful grumbles and hisses while I worked. Bad owner was I, to not devote every minute of every day to him alone.

Yes, horrible person was I. I patted Kaon's lavender scarf-nest and smirked when Tarn hissed indignantly at the affection. Which meant that he was right there for me to reach down and pick up. Cue the wriggles and hisses. I carried him back into the kitchen and ran some more warm water, since the water in the sink had gone cold.

"Oh, calm down," I told him. "You'll like it." He obviously didn't believe me. I plonked him into the sink anyway. "There. You're supposed to be waterproof, so soak for a while to - sonnuvabitch!"

Tarn immediately splashed me. The water was warm, but now the front of my shirt was sopping. I wrung out the wet spot and glared. Tarn sloshed around smugly.

"I should just let the Pet lick you clean," I muttered. There was a whine from under the sink. "No dishes, sorry." Another whine, and creaking as the Pet settled back down.

I put some dishwashing liquid into the water and ran the faucet a little to create bubbles. Tarn sloshed some more, chasing them. _Hiss? Hiss hissss._ There was more splashing as he discovered the fun of popping soap bubbles. He gleefully hissed and began stalking them. Destruction of beautiful, fragile things; of course he'd like that. There was much splashing and whacking of water thereafter. I probably should have seen that coming.

Giving up on keeping my shirt dry, I got a dishrag and put a drop of soap on it. Time for scrubbies. "Hold still, ya little monster. No more splashing," I warned him, "or I'll stop buying you T-cogs." That got me sullen obedience. He even deigned to sit down so he was up to his neck in water, although I could see his little hands under the surface making grabbing motions after the bubbles that started drifting near. "No." _Hissss._ He sulked but behaved.

The little guy did love his T-cogs. Seemed that the Tarn model had a bit of an addiction to the Transformer treats. I was running out of places to hide the baggie that he wouldn't eventually find it and use them all up in one night.

After that, it really did work out like the forums said. Tarn struggled when I started scrubbing him, all four limbs flailing and his treads spinning uselessly as I went after the dust that'd caked in them, but he liked being rinsed. He tried to act like he loathed me with every cable in his tiny body, but he refused to get out of the sink until I turned the faucet on again for a second rinse. He stood under it, mask turned up into the warm water, and raised his hands when he finally had enough. '_You may continue now, mortal man.'_

"Yeah, sure, thanks for the permission." It'd given me time to get a dry towel. The one I'd used before had been repurposed for soaking up all the water splashed up onto the counters.

I tipped him back into my palm and rolled him from hand to hand, running my nails across his treads and rubbing his back with my thumbs under the water. He muted it, but I could feel his engine start purring. Mhmm, yep, he absolutely hated this.

I made an effort not to snicker too loudly.

When he was rinsed to _his_ satisfaction, I tucked him into the crook of my elbow in the towel for drying and polishing. The position caused vigorous kicking before he settled down, glaring up at me. Being glared at by bitty 'bots never got any less adorable, especially when this one was cradled between my arm and my body. He hissed defiance at the rest of the world as if daring it to say anything about it. _Hiss hiss_.

I wiggled my fingers above him, and he tried to catch my hand. Hissing murderously all the while, mind you, but d'aww. He was just like a disgruntled kitten clawing after the fingers teasing him. Except a kitten wasn't likely to cause groin injury later tonight for teasing him like this. I was going to have to wear a jockstrap to bed.

Polishing went better than expected. Way better. I held him cradled like a baby to minimize wriggling, but he was down to token hisses by the middle of the first polish. He went into recharge on me before I even started the second round. I looked down and saw my tiny homicidal D.J.D. model curled into my chest, hands tucked under his mask and legs drawn up.

When I ran a finger down his side, he shifted, sighed, and played soft little trills of classical piano music before dozing happily off again. He kicked one leg every time I stroked a tread just right.

And he'd be absolutely furious if I ever, _ever_ let slip I've got him on video doing it.

END

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**_[A/N:_**_ Bathtimez and homicidal intentions. This is life with a Tarn.__**]**_


	8. Pt 8

**Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 8

**Warnings: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating: ** PG

**Continuity: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division, Scavengers, Bob the non-Insecticon, Grimlock, Rewind, Cosmos

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

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**[* * * * *]**

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It started with Rewind.

No, wait. To be fair, it probably started with Cosmos. Who remembered him? Nobody did. The Cosmos model didn't get a lot of love. He was one of the Transformer brand's lesser known A-line models.

Usually the A-line models were companion electronics, meant to work more with people. For some reason, the Cosmos model was made more along the style of the appliance-oriented D-line. He was manufactured during the big anime weeabo push, trying to take advantage of all the kids blindly buying up anything to make themselves more Japanese. Cute idea, right?

Except that kids, even anime-crazed college-age ones, couldn't afford domestic electronics. Although I heard Cosmos was a big hit over in Japan, so maybe the advertising campaign was better over there. His model bombed in North America, anyway.

Somebody sold the Chinese take-out place down the street a refurbished one. He probably still cost an arm and a leg, but it was an awesome idea for local deliveries. I mean, seriously, a flying rice cooker that lets you dish out as much as you want with your order? Suddenly, everybody on the street started ordering take-out three times a day. Tips alone probably paid for him by the end of the first month.

By the time I got transferred to the store, frequent Chinese take-out was a tradition I happily took part in. Cosmos had the best altmode for an appliance in the history of ever. Whoever designed him to look like a U.F.O. deserved all the promotions. All of them. That was a brilliant bit of marketing, right there. Nobody ever got tired of seeing a little hovercraft bumping the front door, bags of MSG-laden food cartons hanging underneath. I'd say that it wasn't every day my food got delivered by aliens, but I once ate Chinese take-out for a week straight, so...yeah.

So it really started with Cosmos, because Cosmos occasionally came tap-tapping at the store windows with a sticky-note and $30 taped to the inside of his lid. The only place to get electrodomestics repaired in the area was my store, and the Cosmos model was high maintenance. Most of the time it was just rinsing the soy sauce out of his gears, which anybody could do, but other times it was easier to let the professionals deal with it. Hence, $30 and a sticky-note. The Chinese take-out place had an agreement with Bob: he made sure Cosmos got the needed upkeep, and Bob got free dumplings.

Whenever the poor woebegone rice cooker got the cashiers' attention, the cashiers got on the P.A. system to get Bob's. "DE Department to the front. DE Department to the front...aliens have landed."

The first time I heard that, I had to go look, too. It's actually how I met Bob outside of, y'know, working with him every day. Our departments are on opposite ends of the store, so I hadn't even walked through his aisle yet.

I had no idea what I was looking at. "What is **that**?"

"Han Cho Mao's rice cooker," he'd said, toting what looked like a legit alien vessel by me on the way to the Trouble Troop's desk. It had sort of look like a rice cooker in a skirt. "You wanna menu? Cosmos, give the man a menu. Can't you see he's a potential customer?"

"Uh. Right." Okay, so my fellow employee talked to U.F.O.s, and/or crossdressing rice cookers. I'd leaned away warily, because like that wasn't strange at all?

It'd gotten stranger. "Gah!"

A spindly machine arm had unfolded out from underneath the U.F.O. It'd tried to give me a colorful slip of paper. It'd taken me a minute to stop staring and take it. The machine arm had waved as Bob went on his way, and I'd been left staring at - huh. Han Cho Mao's take-out menu. Two-for-one Monday crab rangoon coupon, too. Score.

I'd sort of wandered after Bob, which was how I witnessed my first domestic electronic transforming from a nominally normal-looking appliance into this - this - augh, my heart. My _heart_. Oh God. This was right after I had to give my cats to my parents because my new landlady hated animals, mind you, so I had been going through cute-deprivation after a lifetime of owning squirmy little fuzzies.

Bob had glanced up when I made some sort of helpless noise. "Don't ask, man. Heck if I know how he's smaller when he transforms," he'd said before I'd recovered.

"Wasn't going to ask." I'd circled around the Trouble desk. Although now I sort of had wanted to, because dang if he hadn't somehow gotten smaller than before. "What the hell is it?!"

"Oh." Bob had blinked and propped the bipedal tubby robot up straight as one of the Troubles picked up little guy's feet to start taking apart the bottoms. "This's Cosmos. He's an electrodomestic. One of my guys. Er, not one of **my** guys, but I sell 'em. You know. DE Department?"

The Cosmos rice cooker thing had wriggled, lid pop_-pop_ing as if his feet were uncomfortable or something. Could machines get uncomfortable? Was this a machine? Aw, man, I had so many questions, you have no idea. it was one thing to see ads on TV and another to have semi-sentient robots scooping rice out of his torso for you.

Bob's a laidback guy, luckily, and he'd taken me back to his department to show me around after Cosmos got the fortune cookie taken out of his hover mechanisms. Apparently getting bits of food stuck in them was the Cosmos model's chronic problem. While Bob printed out the repair receipt for the flying rice cooker (nope, still hasn't gotten old) to take back, the Trouble on duty had handed me the slightly-torn paper fortune inside.

_'Be careful! Good things come in small packages, but so does trouble. Your lucky number is six!'_

In retrospect, that fortune was eerily fitting. Maybe if I'd paid attention to it, I wouldn't have taken the Pet home. Warnings about small packages, my ignorant butt. Or rather, my soft heart, because two months later I started adopting electrodomestics.

It wasn't surprising that the cashiers started paging me for Cosmos-fetching duty on Bob's day off. I was well on my way to having my own horde.

I was talking to Rewind when the P.A. crackled to life that day. "Our leader to the front," was stated blandly throughout the store. "The aliens are asking to see our leader. We need leadership. Help."

Angie was so going to get in trouble with management someday for her deadpan announcements. I doubted anyone would take her flat tone seriously, but just in case, I'd better hustle up to the front. "Hold on," I told at Rewind. "We'll finish later."

He'd been interviewing me for my department's advertisement slot on this week's YouTube feature. It usually didn't take long to film my spot, but everybody and their mother-in-law had been out looking for ovens today. Every time the little camera-mech had gotten my attention, there'd been a customer waiting for it as well. That was fine, really, except that apparently he was fed up with being sidelined. Or maybe he was bored. Nobody ever knew what was going on in Rewind's tiny brain. This was the electrodomestic we had to fish out of the breakroom sink after he went spelunking for no good reason.

Although the footage had been hilarious, gotta admit. Four people staring down a drain looked absolutely bizarre from that perspective. The _'Day In The Life Of Drain-O'_ featurette on our YouTube channel had a two-minute segment of Chromedome throwing a miniature fit when he couldn't fit down the sink after Rewind. Perceptor and Crankcase sales did sky-rocket after we put up our edited cellphone footage showing how the display models worked to get the pipes open and then sealed shut afterward.

We, uh, had to edit out Brainstorm's attempt because otherwise Bob swore he'd never get a single sale of that model again.

Anyway, who knew why, but Rewind didn't want to be left behind. He grabbed my thumb and blinked his camera light at me insistently.

I gave him my best _'WTF?'_ eyebrow. "What?"

Blink. Blink-blink-_blink_-blink. Rewind started climbing my hand.

"It's just Cosmos."

Rapidfire blinking. Rewind took no excuses from sales floor minions, obviously. If someone ever made an electrodomestic-to-English translator, we were going to discover they called us twelve kinds of idiot in machine code. I was being badgered by a red light. Rewind stood on the back of my hand, planted his hands on his hips, and blinked me into submission.

"Okay, okay, geeeeeez." Far be it from me to disobey one of our adorable overlords.

I scooped the teensy memory stick camera up and tucked him into my shirt pocket, where he could be safe and probably boss me around some more. That's how these things seemed to work out for me. Adopt small cute thing, then have small cute thing take over my life. That was normal, for me.

Rewind was less demanding than Tarn, at least. Instead of pointing which way I should walk, he just hung his arms out over the front of the pocket. He looked like a strange kind of pen that way, but he turned his head up to record me. I got a poke in the chest on the way out of my department. Rewind hated being ignored. He always, always wanted to be talked to.

"It's just Cosmos," I told him as I headed toward the front. "One day, he's going to malfunction for good, and then I am **not** adopting him." That got another poke. "I won't. Bob won't, either. I don't know how we became the dumping station for domestic electronics, but even I won't take one too broke to be useful at all."

Maybe. I'd have to call in sick to avoid it if someone brought a broken Cosmos model in. I was met at the store door by the biggest, saddest pair of optics I never wanted to see. He _pop-pop_ped his lid forlornly at me as a sticky-note was proffered upward in bitty hands. I read it and face-palmed, because fuck me sideways if Cosmos hadn't _walked_ today. His heating coils had malfunctioned, so they'd sent him in on his own for repairs. Who the heck did that? He was barely a foot tall. It was a two-block walk. He could have gotten stolen or hit by a car!

Someday, that sticky-note was going to say "Free to Good Home," and I was going to be so screwed. I didn't need a rice cooker at all, much less a broken one. I didn't even cook. The reason I knew Cosmos so well was because he was the bringer of food. What the heck would I do with him if I brought him home?

The day for such thoughts wasn't today, however, as Han Cho Mao wanted him back before the dinner rush if possible. I carried the little rice cooker to the Trouble Troop's desk for repairs and dropped Rewind off while I was there. There were more customers in my department, and I didn't have time for advertisement stuff anymore today.

Come Friday, and Rewind put his usual stuff up on the YouTube channel. Not everything he ever put up made it past Carl's public relations-keen eye, but our Friday updates were watched by some of the Trouble Troop desks at other stores in our chain. Rewind's weekly blooper reel sometimes got quite a few hits before Carl made him take it down every Friday. Well, guess whose chin and nose got put up for everyone to laugh at this week? Truly, it was not a flattering angle to see me from. I started growing a mustache immediately.

More importantly - and unfortunately - Rewind chose to include the sound blurt. Which meant that half a dozen Trouble Troop desks throughout the city got to hear me say, _"I don't know how we became the dumping station for domestic electronics_..."

Look, we were probably the biggest of our chain in the city, and we were in a richer area. Lots of customers with disposable income, you follow? So we carried a lot of the pricier products. We already sold more of the domestic electronics than most of the other stores, so we got a higher percentage of attempted returns and broken mechs. After Rewind put up that segment, however, the other stores actually began shipping their electrodomestic returns to us.

Carl thought it was great. He hired an electrodomestic specialist of 18 bratty years of age to work with the Troubles part-time, and Bob set up a little display case to contain the refurbished units. That's fine! Wonderful! Yay for better sales and whatnot, and it wasn't like there were ever a lot at one time, but what the heck?

I mean, come _on_. They could have at least _warned_ us. It took us a month to catch on to what was happening. All we knew was that sometimes our shipment would include an activated domestic electronic. The first couple climbed out of their shipping cases to harass our display models, and we had no idea where they came from.

After things got cleared up, the Troubles got Chromedome to knock the rogue units out for processor reboots and imprint wipes. It wasn't something he liked doing. I think Carl had to hire the teenager because Rewind persuaded Chromedome to start hiding whenever a new return came in.

That all came later, however. That first return? We didn't have a clue where he came from. And by 'we,' I mean Bob, because it was my day off. From what everyone told me afterward, the cashiers kept him up front all day while Carl called around, trying to figure out what store had lost inventory. When the other store manager finally got on the phone and said it was a return, Bob thought it was a little weird but - well, it's Bob.

He took the dang thing home.

Without, I should add, knowing what model it was. It was returned sans box. Stupid? Of course. But _most_ of the time, nobody had to worry about anything but some A-line versus D-line friction. With the rare exceptions of the models like Cosmos, telling the difference between a companion electronic and an appliance electronic was pretty easy, and most of the people who buy electrodomestics have big enough houses that the A/D rivalry doesn't turn into open warfare. Not like the domestic electronic aisle at the store, some days.

Taking the return home was kind of stupid, but mostly just Bob being a sucker. I'd have done the same.

Hey, at least I admitted my weaknesses. My weaknesses were small and cute, okay? Shut up.

So I got a call at two in the freaking morning. Could I ignore it? No. I tried, but Tarn crawled out from under the covers and dragged my cellphone from nightstand to pillow. When I buried my head under said pillow, my teensy personal homewrecker dialed the volume all the way up and stuck it under there with me.

I blearily grabbed for the noisemaker. "**What.**"

Tarn hit me on the side of the face, hissing, until I switched to trying to answer the phone instead. It took me three tries to flip it open. Look, 2 AM? Not at my best, then.

"**What**," I repeated, this time actually into the phone. Go me.

Bob swore a lot normally. He swore like a sailor with a crotch full of mutant crabs when he was upset. A torrent of profanity poured out of the phone. I jerked the phone away from my head, yet I'll still have those mental images engraved in my head until the day I died. Even Tarn went quiet in surprise.

Bob was a bit upset.

"...dude?" I was awake now. "Dude...you okay?" I didn't know what language he was cursing in, but I thought I felt Cthulhu turn over. Oops, no, just Kaon between my feet. I winced at the zap and sat up in a hurry. Very awake, now. "Bob?"

"Fucker killed him!"

"What?" Oh shit, this was not a call I wanted at two in the morning. Or ever. Fuck, who'd died? "Bob! Who? What?" I sat up, dumping Tarn onto the bedcovers as I started fumbling for clothes. "Bob!"

There was a snarl of noise, and a heavy thump. I started wondering if I could make bail if Bob was hitting someone instead of something. "Flywheels. The fucker killed Flywheels."

For a second, it didn't click. I ran through my short list of people Bob ever talked about. Flywheels, Flywheels. The biker cousin? No, wait, was that his buddy from - wait. "Flywheels. Little guy Flywheels?" I asked cautiously, straightening up. The lights smacked me in the back of the eyes as I flicked them on. "The hell, Bob?"

"Just - get over here, alright?! Get this fucker away from me before I chuck him out the goddamn window!" There was another stream of high proof profanity, directed at 'the fucker,' who was referred to in much worse terms before I stopped trying to interrupt with things like the fact that it was 2 AM and balls-freezing cold and I had to work in six hours and fine, whatever, I was on my way.

I didn't object _very_ hard. I mean, yeah, I didn't want to get up and trek over to Bob's place, but now I was curious. Kind of sad, too, if it was true. I'd liked Flywheels. What the heck could have taken him out? I had to know.

Bob had sounded pretty bad, too, but it's a guy thing. Guys could admit to wanting to gawk at the carnage, not to wanting to comfort the survivors.

I piled on layers of clothes over my Snoopy pajamas and headed out into the night. Morning. Whatever the heck it was by then. If I was awake at 3 AM after sleeping, did that make it morning or night for me?

I obviously hadn't had enough sleep, either way. And it was bloody cold!

Half an hour, some walking, and a bus ride later, I finally got to Bob's place. I didn't even have to buzz his number. There was somebody waiting at the door.

"Whoa, what happened to you?" Crankcase gave me a disgusted look and sulked on the other side of the security door. He looked like he'd been thrown down the stairs. He was dented, and his head injury looked worse than usual. "Geez, you okay?" I crouched outside the door and looked through the grid over the door's window. "Cranky?"

The little guy gave me another sullen look before climbing up to the security box. The door buzzed when he pushed the button, and I opened the door.

He jumped from box to my coat sleeve without even hesitating, which was weird. Nobody from the Bob-mob but Krok and Spinister would come near me since the ill-fated attempt at introducing Tarn to Fulcrum. Not any more, it looked like. I must have become the safer option. Crankcase actually clung to the fabric so hard his fists were curled into it, and he only lifted his face enough to give me a glare when I touched his back. Then he buried his face again and refused to budge.

"Dang, man. That bad, huh?" So much for hoping Bob had just been exaggerating. I sighed and started up the stairs. Dang. Poor Flywheels.

Bob met me at the door. "He's in the bathroom. Get him out of here. I hope Tarn kills him." With that, he grabbed Crankcase off my arm so hard the little guy made a protesting noise in binary.

"...what the heck." That was unexpected. I stood there blinking in shock as my buddy/coworker coldly turned his back and slammed into the kitchen. By that I mean that he kicked the sliding door open, yanked a drawer out only to slam it closed again, took a frying pan off the counter and threw it into the sink, and slapped a kitchen cupboard door shut. "Uh."

After a few seconds of staring, I edged toward the kitchen. "Where's...shit, man. Where's Flywheels?"

I didn't see any of Bob's scavenged group of returns, in fact. Despite me being persona non grata in their optics, his bunch were always underfoot any time I'd been over. Now, there were none to be seen but grouchy little Crankcase hanging from Bob's hands. He looked angry to exist. Both of them did, really.

This was getting strange.

"Trashcan," Bob muttered. Crankcase just looked more pissed off, which I hadn't thought was possible.

"You threw him away?" Wow. That was odd. I went over to check out the trash can beside the refrigerator. "Can't you just get him fixed?"

"No."

The single-word answers from Bob, of all people, were weirding me out. Why couldn't he get Flywheels fixed? I mean, the personality adaptation their itty-bitty processors went through was something I didn't try to understand, but domestic electronics were essentially machines. The Trouble Troop did small repairs for electrodomestics at the store, but they shipped complicated repairs back to the company. It was expensive to get it done, but Bob spent ridiculous amounts of cash on his lot already. I didn't get why he'd thrown Flywheels in the trash when he -

Oh.

"Holy shit."

"Yeah."

"That's Flywheels?!"

Crankcase made peeved binary noises at us both. I really hope they never make a translator, because I didn't want to know what he thought of us right then. Bob just turned him over in his hands and halfheartedly poked at the new dings and dents. "It's what's left of him."

What was left of Flywheels consisted of a pair of legs and a mess of shredded metal. I just..._ugh_. Yuck. Not repairable, nope. I'd always thought Tarn would be dangerous if he were any bigger, but now I could see how dangerous he was right now!

"And you want me to take this guy home?" No way. No way was I letting whatever had turned Flywheels into confetti into my apartment. Tarn could probably handle himself, but what about Kaon? "Not happening, man."

Bob slid down the counter to sit on the floor, still holding Crankcase. The cupboard under the sink creaked open, and Fulcrum peeked out. He looked like he'd been run over several times, even worse than Crankcase. Bob patted the floor beside himself without much hope, but Fulcrum gave him a wary look. The little scaredy-bot wasn't going over there, no way, no how.

"I looked him up," my buddy said tiredly. "I - fuck. I should have done it before I went to bed, but I was tired, and I'd taped him into the box I carried him home in, so I figured it'd be alright until I had more time." Fulcrum gave me a timid look and scurried over to hide behind my ankle, apparently terrified that something else would come through the door and destroy him if he didn't take shelter. Bob held Crankcase on top of his knee and stared at Fulcrum. "Krok opened the top of the box, and that was the end of it. Tesarus model, D-line, Justice Division."

Oo. Ooooo, _ouch_. Tarn was D.J.D., too, and he'd gone after Fulcrum the second he had the chance. I'd known what kind of damage he'd have done the little Moka pot if we hadn't stopped him, but now I _knew_. There was something different about seeing pictures on the computer versus seeing poor Flywheels' remains in the trash.

Waaaait, hold on. "I thought only he," I pointed down at Fulcrum, who was doing his best to scramble up and hide in the top of my sock, "was the only List collector model you have?"

"Yeah. Yeah, so turns out? D.J.D. models auto-add any 'bots who get in their way to their frickin' List." Bob finally let Crankcase go, and the little guy slid down his leg to go limping off toward the under-sink sanctuary. We watched him go. "It's part of their hunt-mode feature. It's probably why they stopped making the List models. I woke up to full-scale war in my living room, and I've only got my guys. Can you imagine a whole house full of electrodomestics going at it?"

He scrubbed a hand over his face. There was a quiet _'beed-beed?'_ from under the sink, and Fulcrum reluctantly slid back down my ankle. Krok stuck his head out of the cupboard and _beedle-beep_ed again to hurry him along, and I winced.

"You gonna get them repaired?" Krok's face looked like hamburger. Not-tasty hamburger, at that.

"I'm gonna have to." Bob frowned and shook his head. I knew that frown. It's the sort of frown I got at funerals when I was trying to be manly and not cry. Feels like shit, and feels worse when there are people around so it's either frown that awful frown or cry in front of them. "Just take the damn thing. I don't care if you throw it away or what. I just - get it out of here."

"Yeah." Time for me to get out and let Bob keep his dubious masculinity. You didn't mock guys at a funeral, but you didn't stick around to stare at them, either. "I'll figure out something to do with him, don't worry about it." I could bring him into work in the morning, or something. Maybe one of the cashiers would want him. "I'm sorry, man."

I got a grunt in return.

With that, I retreated to the bathroom. Grimlock was sitting against the outside of the door like he was standing guard, but even he looked like he'd been beat on. He gave me a dull look, but he always gave me dull looks. Bob's Dynobot model had even more problems than my Pet, although his were all in the CPU.

"Shoo. Go find Bob. Bob. Bob. Go find Bob." I toed him out of the way, and he toddled off to presumably find Bob. He'd probably try to iron Bob's shirt while he was wearing it again, but hey. Maybe it'd distract him.

Alright, it was time to meet Tesarus.

I cracked the door open expecting I didn't know what all. Murderous psycho blender ready to shred my feet, or a ninja attack from above by a food processor, maybe.

I wasn't expecting an electrodomestic casually bathing himself in the bathroom sink. Da fuq.

The open door got his attention. He sat up in the sink and looked at me. The water swirled as the half-submerged little tunnel in his tummy turned on. The bar of soap floating on the surface of the water got sucked in and came out the other side in a spray of gooey soap bits. Well, this was definitely the right guy.

"Hi." I looked around the bathroom and grabbed the towel hanging off the back of the door. Bob could run it through the laundry if he had a problem with me using it, because like hell was I walking outside in this weather carrying something wet. "C'mere. You're coming home with me."

That got me a disinterested stare. I knew the D-line didn't imprint like the A-line did, but I got the distinct impression that Tesarus didn't give a shit about me or my home. Splendid. I could tell this horror was going straight back to the store in a few hours. Sure, he was small and cute enough to trigger me. He was bigger than Tarn by a full three inches, but fat and with this big red 'X' instead of regular optics. Cute, right?

He was really coming up short on personality, however. This was the first domestic electronic I'd run into who was more of an appliance than anything. He rinsed himself off and turned in place to let me dry him, face a blank slate. Cute, but a murderous blender...food processor...thing. Yeah. Back to the store he'd go.

In only a few hours, too. By the time I zipped him into my coat and got the heck out of Bob's place, it was close to 4 AM. I'd be getting up for work in two hours anyway, and I'd just missed the bus, so heck. It'd be almost 5 AM by the time I got home, at this rate.

The only logical thing to do at that point was go eat breakfast. I had been running around in freaking cold weather, I was still wearing pajamas, and I wasn't going to get any more sleep before work. Fuck it. I deserved hashbrowns. Crunchy, delicious fried food to start my day out better than it'd been going.

McDonalds it was.

"You be quiet," I told the electrodomestic tucked inside my coat as I pushed through the door. He was being good, aside from a startled kick when I'd put him in my coat in the first place. He probably hadn't expected to be carried like that, but I didn't have a box and I knew he'd get cold if I just put him under an arm. "We'll be home in a while, and then I'll give you to somebody." Somebody in the store had to want a walking blender.

I ordered five hashbrowns and a bacon, egg, and cheese McMuffin. What? It'd been a suck morning, okay? This wasn't your heart I was saturating in bad fats. I was cold and tired, and I wanted as many fried potato derivatives as I could cram in my face right now.

I found a table in front of a window and unzipped my coat to let Tesarus out onto the table. The McDonalds was empty, and besides, if somebody wanted to steal him, I'd let it happen.

"Here. Guard this." I put my tray beside him and headed back toward the counter. I needed a cup of coffee and enough ketchup to drown my sorrows in.

I came back to the table to witness a curious sight. Impassive, machine-like Tesarus was hovering over my pile of hashbrowns with his fists pressed to his mouth in what looked like horror. He looked up at me, and there was a worried _whrr-churrrr_ as his grinder turned on.

Coffee and ketchup in hand, I stopped and looked down at him. "What? Did someone actually take one?" I poked the pile, but it looked like all five hashbrowns were present. Mmm, delicious greasy fried food. "Dunno what your problem is."

I sat down and started to lick the finger I'd used to count the hashbrowns, but there was suddenly a napkin shoved in my face. "O...kay?" I took the napkin, giving Tesarus a puzzled look. "Thanks, I guess."

There was more fluttering about the hashbrown pile. I began ripping open ketchup packets, and my table somehow turned into a stage. Tesarus and I performed Tchaikovsky's lesser-known ballet, _'Dance of the Hashbrowns.'_ The little electrodomestic kept getting between me and the hashbrowns like Gandalf at the bridge. Tesarus was the defensive linebacker in the breakfast game.

It was kind of funny, but frustrating at the same time. McDonalds' hashbrowns are only unmitigated awesome when they're hot and crunchy. They must be consumed quickly, or they turn to cold grease. When I finally elbowed Tesarus aside and got one hashbrown smeared with ketchup, he hauled the tray across the table from me and stole all the salt packets while he was at it.

"What is your problem?" I reached for my coffee cautiously, but apparently that was allowed. "Don't tell me you hate McDonalds."

I said it as a joke, but he started nodding vigorously, _whrr-churr_ing like I'd hit jackpot. He batted at my hand when I reached for the egg McMuffin, but I'd been using my left as a distraction. My right hand reached over his head for a successful nab of hashbrown #2. There was a near-scream as his grinder went into high gear for a second.

"Well, tough. I do." I sat back in my seat as he ran forward to the edge of the table, fingers grasping uselessly at the hashbrown held out of his reach. I swear, his little optic-X got wider when ketchup was liberally used. "Mmm," I deliberately said at him. I took a bite and munched thoughtfully as he fell to his knees, hands in despairing claws. "Needs salt."

He sprinted back toward the tray as I reached in slow motion. "Saaaaaalt."

_WhRRR-churr. Whrr-CHURR-RR-RR!_

I got my salt, but only after he fought me over it. I sprinkled the packet on a few grains at a time right there in front of him. There was rolling about, complete with kicking and tiny fists pounded on the tabletop. I made sure to show him my greasy, ketchup-covered fingertips before licking them clean. He dragged half a sheaf of napkins over and tried throwing them at my face.

"Bwahahaha." Yes, I laughed like a B-movie villain. It seemed appropriate. "McMuffin time!"

Cue the domestic electronic version of 'The Scream' by Munch.

The McMuffin was eaten in large bites, just so I could chew with my mouth open and watch Tesarus utterly lose it. "Om nom nom." Chomp, slorp, chew chew chew. People were starting to come in, but this was totally worth the stares.

The emotionless domestic electronic from Bob's place had turned into a twitching, desperate 'bot apparently trying to save me from myself. He tried blotting the remaining three hashbrowns with the napkin piles, and he looked severely alarmed by the amount of grease he managed to soak up. To be fair, I was kind of grossed out by that as well, but I didn't eat McDonalds because it was healthy. I ignored him pushing the stained napkins at me. He fumed and threw all the salt packets onto the floor. He knocked my coffee cup over and attempted to kick a hashbrown off the table while I was getting a refill. I bought two more hashbrowns since I was up already, and I could hear that little grinder grating protest all the way across the restaurant.

He resorted to stuffing the last hashbrown into himself, so I honestly couldn't tell you who won that meal. I drew the line at licking the table after he sprayed hashbrown bits across the table.

I didn't find out until I looked it up later - see, I did my research this time - that appliance electronics, especially kitchen ones, have a vested interest in making sure their owners eat at home. They might get thrown out if they're not used, right? Fast food was anathema to electrodomestics who worked in the kitchen.

Which did sort of explain why Bob only ate take-out when it was free. He always had brown-bag lunches and Tupperware full of leftovers at work. I'd never thought about it, but his gang probably made him three meals a day.

Tesarus hatred of my breakfast, in that context, made sense. There probably weren't many people who took their kitchen appliances with them when they went out for fast food. They might all mime cardiac arrest like he did, if his behavior was normal.

But I didn't know any of that at the time. All I knew was that Tesarus went from being the impassive murderer of Flywheels to someone holding a memorial service for my health in the middle of a McDonalds. He clambered off the table and dragged me over to the wall to show me the calorie poster. He used the side of my styrofoam coffee cup to calculate out just how many calories my breakfast had, writing with his finger and fretting until I read his math.

The cashiers stared as an eight-inch domestic electronic leaned against my calves. He turned around to brace his back on me and dig in his heels, trying to push me toward the door. I sighed and shrugged, but dangit, I was smiling.

"Is that yours?" one of the cashiers asked, disbelieving her own eyes. "Or are you his?"

That got a disapproving glare and sharp nod from Tesarus. I looked down at him, bemused. I got no say in the matter, it seemed.

"Tarn's gonna kill me," I muttered, reaching down to pick my newest evil appliance. He smugly sat in my hands as he was carried, triumphant, out of the den of iniquity and grease. Our blessed savior from hashbrowns: Tesarus.

And, yes, dammit, I learned how to cook. He made me. Bringing home dinner from burger joints was no longer an option. You haven't seen a tantrum until you see a salad shooter run your nice new watch through himself out of angry, Richard Simmons-esque concern for your health. Such fussing I have never seen.

It took him six weeks to catch on to the fact that I was seeing Cosmos and the Han Cho Mao take-out menu at work, still. Tesarus acted like he'd caught me cheating on him. There was a tribunal waiting for me when I got home one Friday night. Rewind had caught me in the breakroom and put it up on YouTube, and that was the end of fast food for me.

It started with Rewind, and it ended with him, too. I'll get him for that, yet.

I really missed hashbrowns...

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**[* * * * *]**

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_Zanne made pretties!_

Tarn in his mitten-pouch

Kaon helping the Pet wash dishes

Both are can be found in Zanne's account on DeviantArt, or the links are available over on the Ao3 of this story.


	9. Pt 9

**Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 9

**Warning: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating: ** PG

**Continuity: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

* * *

** [* * * * *] **

* * *

Cooking. It's something people do everyday. It should not be an adventure, or at least not an ordeal. Yet here I was, facing another edition of _Cooking With the Terrible Trio_.

If this were actually a show, it'd be rated R because of -

"Holy fucking shit, get your gorram feet out of my milk, you little bastard!"

- language. Mine, specifically, although Tarn's hissing probably counted as swearing in some language out there.

I yanked Tarn out of the measuring cup he'd been dabbling his feet in and looked suspiciously at the milk. It still looked white. That was a good sign, but didn't necessarily mean he hadn't done anything. Last time I'd caught him tampering with my ingredients, he'd switched the salt and the sugar. Same color, same grain-size, and completely not what I needed swapped in a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Tarn hung from my hand, hissing evil sniggering laughter as I took a cautious sip from the measuring cup. Nope, still tasted like milk. It probably wasn't exactly sanitary anymore, but what the heck. I was the only one who'd be eating this stuff.

"You," I said, dangling Tarn into the sink to swish his feet clean in the water, "are hereby banished from the counter. Begone, demon!"

He didn't seem to mind being unceremoniously plopped on the floor. Why would he? He'd just find new trouble to get into, or wait until I was looking elsewhere and climb up again.

But, hey. At least he didn't shed all over the apartment, right? They didn't claw the furniture, either, which had been my landlady's two most strident objections when refusing to allow pets. I will forever savor the look on my landlady's face when she was confronted by my new 'guard dogs' at the door last month. She made me rehome my cats, but she couldn't saw squat about teensy domestic electronics. They were just machines, right? Heh. I'd been polite enough when she'd stopped by, but Tarn had armed himself with a fork when he realized there was a stranger in the apartment. Kaon had climbed up the coatrack and done his darndest to creep her out by sightless staring while hanging off one of the hooks.

These guys drove me crazy, but they were worth the trouble. Most of the time. When Tarn wasn't being a pain in the ass.

Tesarus peered over the edge of the counter at him. "Why couldn't **you** stand up to him?" I asked the little blender as I went back to measuring out flour. More like accused him, really. "You're bigger. You've got built-in weaponry. You should totally be able to beat him up."

Not that I wouldn't have stopped a beating if it'd happened, but it hadn't. I'd expected to have to break up Tarn whaling on Tesarus a few times, or Tesarus trying to stuff Kaon into himself. I mean, I'd brought an electrodomestic into my apartment who had already gruesomely disassembled one appliance. Even if Flywheels had been on the List, I'd sort of expected Tesarus to be more, er, randomly violent toward my two dudes.

Nope. I guess the D-line's Justice Division got along better with each other than any other electrodomestics, because instead of turning on each other, they'd just ganged up on me. It was a freakin' robot conspiracy.

Tesarus whirred his little blender at me and went back to working on the giant block o' cheese I'd picked up at WheeZee's ShopMart for this recipe. He'd been waiting for me to let him at it. Good God, the anticipation. He'd been sitting and staring at the refrigerator since I put it in there. I'd brought this thing in after work two days ago, and I swore Tesarus saw Megatron reflected in its plastic wrap. He'd had some sort of religious experience right there in front of the bag, _whrr-churr_ing like crazy.

I might have deliberately gotten the biggest solid hunk of cheese I could, just for that reaction. Maybe. But I admitted nothing.

He'd been standing by my bed waiting when I'd woken up today. That impatient optic-X had followed me around the whole morning, and he'd almost climbed my leg when I finally got out the cutting board and my set of measuring cups. Cooking, in his opinion, was something that I should do everyday, but I still had to steel myself to break out the pans. So far, what I'm mostly learned from attempting to make food for myself was that Kaon didn't care, Tarn would actively be a pest, and _holy crap_, Tesarus was six kinds of adorable when bossing me around the kitchen.

Right now, the miniature grinder was trying to figure out how to fit the massive cheese block through himself. His bitty torso-tunnel was about an inch and a half diameter. The cheese block was about five inches tall by seven inches wide. I hadn't volunteered to cut it up, and he hadn't done more than poke me until I got a knife out of the drawer for him. Yes, I'd voluntarily armed a small electrodomestic who was prone to murder. I liked to live dangerously.

Like I said: cooking was either an adventure or an ordeal in my kitchen.

"You sure you don't need help?"

The knife was waved vaguely in my direction. That X-optic Tesarus had could give a mean glare. He whirred an emphatic denial at me and started sawing off a corner.

"I think I was just told to shut up," I mused to Kaon, who'd perched on the window ledge behind the sink. "That sounded like a 'Go away, stupid human' to me."

Missing optics stared blankly back at me. Kaon was neither agreeing or disagreeing with my assessment. My little Internet router had no quarrel with Tesarus, after all, so why would he get the walking blender in trouble? They got along fine, especially when harassing me.

As far as I could tell, my two 'bots and the newbie had gotten into one fight, and it hadn't been much of one. I hadn't even needed to step in. They'd tussled over who got the electrical outlet first, and that'd decided the apartment hierarchy from then on. I still didn't know how Tarn had ended up on top. Kaon kind of had the advantage; one _ZAP_, and Tesarus had certainly fallen into line. Maybe Tarn had music mojo in his favor or something.

I suspected that I fell at the bottom of this household hierarchy. I didn't know anything for sure, but just from how all three of the electrodomestics treated me?

Hmmph.

I made a face at Kaon and looked at the recipe I'd printed out and given to him to hold. Holding stuff for me was positively helpful compared to what Tarn did, which was negative helpful, so I was glad Kaon just sat there. I double-checked my two measuring cups against the recipe. I'd poured the salt on top of the flour after taste-testing to make sure it was actually salt this time. There was less chance of tampering if I kept my ingredients together and within sight at all times.

"Alright, I've got milk, salt, and flour. I'll need that cheese soon." There was a threatening _whrRRR_ in my general direction warning me off Tesarus' cheese block. It was his precioussssss. "Okay, okay, I'll wait! Geez, I'm just sayin', dude. I can't start until you've got it shredded, so get a move on."

Tesarus turned his back on me. How rude. _Whrr-churr-rrr-rr._ That sounded even ruder.

"Someday I'll translate all the names he calls me," I told Kaon conversationally, "and then I'm going to buy KFC for **weeks**." There was a protesting, semi-alarmed whirring noise. "Weeks and weeks of greasy fried chicken, mm-mm."

I got a belligerent glare, and then Tesarus defiantly broke off a hunk of cheese in my direction. I haven't a clue how he did it defiantly. He just did. That immediately made him happier. He forced the chunk into his grinder and spat shredded cheese out his back.

Not everywhere all over the countertop, thankfully. After three weeks in my kitchen experimenting with food-like substances - sometimes what we produced didn't really resemble anything edible - and Tesarus, I'd made the discovery that he was supposed to have attachments. After digging through the stock room at the store, I finally found the box he'd been returned in. There was no user manual, of course, but I found his cleaning brush for coffee grinding and the juicer attachment. He also had a little cup attachment that clipped on his back to catch whatever he was grinding. So the cheese went into the cup, and when the cup was full, he came over and whirred at me until I emptied it into a bowl and he could start filling it again.

I left him to it. I figured it'd take him a good ten minutes to finish breaking down his beloved block of cheese completely. The recipe didn't call for as much shredded cheese as he was making, but I didn't have the heart to stop him. He was having so much fun. I wasn't even watching him and I was still smiling a bit at how frickin' happy he sounded. Nachos were a legitimate breakfast food in my household. I could use the excess shredded cheese no problem.

The nice thing about buying stuff like cheese or vegetables unsliced or in bulk was that they were cheaper that way. I'd had no idea until Tesarus started bullying me into cooking. So now I did things like compare prices on bulk generic pasta, which was how I'd ended up with a ginormous bag of macaroni noodles instead of the small one I went into WheeZee's for. It was cheaper to buy more. Macaroni could be made with canned spaghetti sauce, if it came down to it. Noodles couldn't be that hard to cook.

I hoped, anyway. I'd bought a clip thing to close the bag once I scooped out as much as I wanted to use today, so I had better not have bought something I'd never use again.

So. I had noodles. I had a pot of salted water heating on the stove, and I was going to watch the noodles like a hawk when I put them in. I didn't care if I had to test them forty times in the next ten minutes. I was darn well going to have perfect macaroni noodles! They'd be drained and ready to go when Tesarus finally finished having his fun. Because today? Folks, today I was going to make macaroni and cheese.

Yes, yes. Hold your applause.

Baby steps, man. Electrodomestic-sized steps. I'd avoided cooking more than microwave popcorn and Hot Pockets up until this point in my life. Homemade mac'n'cheese was a big step for someone who'd sort of believed the oven was a mystical device wherein magic happened and cookies popped out. Having Tarn sabotage my efforts to debunk this myth wasn't helping me make any progress, either.

Speaking of which. "Get away from there."

_Hissss hiss. Hiss?_ Tarn was shocked. Appalled! How dare I accuse him of evil-doing! More importantly, how did I know what he was up to?

"I don't even need to look anymore to know that you're causing trouble, that's how." Sure enough, when I looked up from watching a pot not boil, Tarn was reluctantly backing away from my measuring cups. I'd have to taste-test the top of the salt/flour cup to make sure he hadn't added sugar, but I'd probably caught him in time.

_Whrrrrrrr!_

"Yes, yes. Hold on." I kept one eye on my water - because I would burn it, otherwise - while popping the cup off Tesarus' back. The cheese went onto the mound in the bowl. That was a lot of cheese, man. "You know, maybe you could save some for later?" Tesarus wriggled until he could turn about in my hands and give me that X-glare. "Or not. Apparently not. We'll go with not." There wasn't that much of the cheese block left, anyway. I clicked the cup back onto him and let him go back to massacring the remnants. "Go. Shred 'til you drop."

Tesarus needed no mere Joe's permission to shred things. The cheese was a goner. He even picked up crumbles left on the cutting board to shove through himself. There was constant, quiet whirring as he hunted down cheesy remnants and even scraped off the knife for the last bits. _Such_ a happy blender.

In the meantime, the watched pot finally came to a boil, and I poured in my macaroni noodles. Thusly did I learn that when something is put into a full pot of water, the water must go somewhere. Obvious in retrospect, of course, but that didn't help me as water promptly slopped over the side of the pot, spilling all over the stove. Some of the spill cascaded off the edge of the stove onto me.

Boiling water on jeans! Not cool! "Sonnuva - !"

Hissing came from behind me. There was an answering electric crackle from the window ledge. I didn't need a translator to know that was electrodomestic laughter at my expense. I had an audience, and they enjoyed watching me make mistakes.

"I hate you both," I informed Tarn and Kaon as I gingerly blotted at the hot spatter-marks on my jeans. Ow. Good thing it was cold in the apartment, or I'd have burns instead of just tender spots.

_Hiss!_

_ZAP-crackle._

I was being mocked. I could tell.

I mopped up the spill. Noodles and water were stirred with utmost concentration. I put the spoon down.

Then I pounced. "**Cuddle time!**"

Kaon flailed and zapped me, but he couldn't evade me. It's only the initial shock I have to tolerate, and I'm used to it. The static prickles are good for another mild jolt every few minutes, but that was never enough to deter _me._ My kitchen wasn't big enough to take more than a couple strides to cross, and I went after Tarn as soon as I snatched Kaon up. Tarn ran for it, but he had to get off the table before he could truly escape. I nabbed him before he slid down the table leg. _Hisss!_

I squished both of them in a hug. "Awww, who's my cuties? Are you my cuties? You're my darnit-Tarnit and zapster, yes you are! Aboogie-boo-boo cutey-wooties. I love you soooooo much! Wuv wuv wuv. All the cuddles for my darnit-Tarnit and zapster. All of them!"

They were lucky they weren't furry as well being tiny and cute, but that wouldn't protect them forever. In all likelihood, eventually I was going to start kissing them on the heads like I used to do to my cats. After about a minute of being aggressively snuggled, even Tarn stopped hitting me. Kaon had given up already, and together they sat in my hands and sulked. Nothing, no pride or indignant protest, could withstand entire minutes of my most exaggerated, squeaky-voiced babytalk. Besides, the more they struggled, the cuter they were, and the more I tweaked their itsy-bitsy flailing limbs while hugging them harder. They had no way to combat me but to go limp in resignation to the cuddling.

"Yes you are," I finished, giving them one last squeeze. Tarn growled his engine at me, but he'd been defeated and knew it. He gave me a half-hearted hiss when I pinched his treads. Kaon didn't even react to me wiggling his teensy Tesla coils. They both fled for the living room when I let them down.

I raised both fists in triumph. Hierarchy restored! Primitive man once more reigned victorious over the household, proving himself superior to technology via, uh, intense snuggling. Wait, no. That's probably not how this stuff was supposed to work. Cuddling and cooing challengers into submission wasn't included in any dominance fight I'd ever seen on the Discovery Channel.

"I think my ancestors would be ashamed," I told Tesarus as I returned to the stove. "Maybe if I sit on the floor and grunt a lot while eating I'll get back some primate street cred - gah!" The noodles had spawned a foamy nightmare beast trying to escape the pot!

I sorted the foam-monster out - turns out pasta does that - and emptied Tesarus' last cupful of cheese after testing the noodles for doneness. Nope, still safe. On with the recipe. Me primitive man, make macaroni! Grunt grunt. Me strong macho man beat chest after defeating tiny domestic electronics and pasta-based foam monster!

My mental image of Neanderthal-man apparently spoke like Grimlock. I spent way too much time at Bob's place.

"Okay. So. Next?" Kaon had dropped the recipe in the sink, the little glitch, so I had to fish it out of the water. Tesarus started to jump in to wash himself, but I stopped him in time. Kitchen appliances, it seemed, had good hygiene. "Hold on, I've got a treat for you."

_Whr-churr?_ The miniature blender stood on the counter, craning his neck to peer curiously around me when I opened the refrigerator up.

I turned and plunked two whole sticks of butter beside him. "Sixteen tablespoons of butter, mi amigo. Don't say I don't do crap for you." That small red optic-X lit up like all of Tesarus' back-up batteries had just kicked in. "Shred me some butter, dude."

Technically, I didn't need the butter shredded. I just had to melt it. I could have just put it in my frying pan and let it melt that way, but, I mean - that little face. How could I deny that little face? I'd seen the size of the sticks and immediately known I had to let him do this. It was just as funny as I'd imagined, too. He hopped from foot to foot in front of me as I peeled the wax paper wrapping off the butter sticks and handed them to him. His hands sunk into the sides, and he began doing some sort of jittery dance as he tried to get it at the right angle to feed it into his torso-tunnel. It was half as tall as he was!

I grinned and left him to his buttery destruction. I had noodles to get just right.

It took him a couple minutes to maneuver it around. When he got the first stick done, it turned into a big butter-lump in his catch-cup. Oh, well. It made him so happy, and what difference did the shape make? I scooped it out into the frying pan and gave him the cup back. He raced back over to attack the second stick.

I put the stove on low under the frying pan and went back to minding my noodles. I was going to have perfect macaroni, dangit.

The butter melted slowly. Tesarus came over when he finished, and I added the rest of the butter to the pan. It looked like it'd take a while to melt, which was fine because I had to drain the noodles. While I did that, Tesarus splashed about in the main part of the sink. The plug I pulled got an inquiring look because I usually kept it in on the narrow side sink I was emptying hot water down, but I put the plug back in before he could climb over the partition to investigate. I didn't normally use that side of the sink for a reason. I was afraid what would happen if I turned on the garbage disposal. Tarn would be bad enough, but I was sort of convinced Tesarus would fall in love.

That would be something to deal with another day. For now, I ran down my recipe checklist. Noodles? Check. Ingredients still unmolested on the counter? Awesome. Maybe this cooking thing wasn't so hard after all.

The butter was still melting, so I helped Tesarus clean up. Unlike Tarn, who still did his best to get me as wet as he was, my newest electrodomestic was practically tame in the sink. It was like doing the dishes. Which...was kind of what cleaning him was, so yeah. Made sense. At least it was easy to clean one of them. I didn't want the Pet sticking his head inside this guy - I'd seen poor Flywheels - so I pushed up my sleeves and used hot water and soap. I'd bought a sponge on a stick thing for scrubbing out his grinder, and - huh.

I picked him up and squinted through his torso. He whirred at me, wondering what I was doing. That just made the glistening soap film inside his grinder jiggle.

"I wonder..."

Tesarus went very still, optic-X blinking in surprise as I gently blew through his torso. As I'd suspected, a big fat bubble formed on the other side of him. Sweeping him downward cut the bubble off, and it floated away, off across the kitchen.

"Look." I turned my hand so he could see, too. "Check out what you can do."

He looked, just as the bubble burst. The sight got an uncertain whirring. Tesarus was not sure if he liked that.

Tarn, on the other hand, had frozen in the middle of the kitchen with his hands still outstretched like he could reach the popped bubble. _Hiss?_ His head bobbed about as he searched the open air for his missing toy. He hissed again, sounding disappointed.

"Shhhh," I whispered to Tesarus. "He doesn't know where they're coming from." The grinder gave me a dubious look as I dipped him back in the soapy water. He obliged me by splashing water through his torso-tunnel again, however, and I lifted him up. "Let's see if he figures it out."

I waited until Tarn went to inspect the mop corner, as if suspecting that bubbles were the Pet's newest malfunction, and then I blew again. It got a small, wet bubble that burst too soon. Tesarus pointed at the sink, and I dipped him again. He was grinning when I lifted him this time, possibly because Tarn was fending off the Pet. The Pet regarded any venture into the mop corner as a cue to begin Cleaning Time. It'd rocketed out from its scrubbie-nest under the sink the second it saw Tarn by the mop. _Must lick everything!_

Tarn was not a fan of Cleaning Time. There was much displeased hissing.

It took a bit of experimentation, but between the two of us, we discovered how to synchronize a slow grinder-turn with my blowing. Four fat bubbles drifted across the kitchen. Tesarus and I grinned at each other.

You know, I'd heard the term 'hissy-fit' all my life. Until I got Tarn, I hadn't realized what it actually meant. Tarn threw the best hissy-fits. His angry ones were hilariously cute, but geez. I'd thought Tesarus was happy about the cheese block? Tarn exploded into happy hisses when he spotted the bubbles. Look at all the pretty bubbles for him to destroy!

"I think we're going to have great fun with this later," I told Tesarus as we watched Tarn transform and race in circles under one of the bubbles. My pain in the ass was hissing in terrible anticipation, so very excited that this giant bubble was slowly descending toward him. He shot out of altmode to jump up and down, teensy hands clutching at air, and then he collapsed back into his tank form to zoom around some more. If he'd had my I-Pod docked, I'm fairly sure he'd have been playing the _Jaws_ theme.

Tesarus smirked at the show, and his grinder gave smug whirrs when I returned him to the sink.

_VrrRRRREEET!_ Tarn's motor screamed in frustration when the bubble popped right before it came into reach. I smothered a laugh under a cough and studiously went back to my melted butter. Me? Laughing at Tarn? Now, why would I do that?

His glare tried to drill holes in my ankles. Ha! Now he knew what it felt like to be laughed at by the audience. Revenge was sweet.

"Butter," I said to myself. The recipe was soaked, but still readable. "Stir flour and salt into the butter." I could do this. Really, I could.

I was going to have perfect mac'n'cheese. I _was_.

This was going rather well, to be honest. Nothing had gotten set on fire, and when I tasted the flour/salt mixture, it still tasted like flour and salt. I made sure to taste the milk again before dribbling it into the resulting, er, 'roux.' Whatever the heck a 'roux' was. I didn't even know how to pronounce it, but it was evidently made out of butter and flour, and it was bad if it was lumpy. I had no idea why, but all the recipes I read through referred to it, so whatever.

My roux was non-lumpy and friggin' perfect. Yes! I cackled while stirring in the milk. The noodles were already cooked, the hard part of this recipe was finished, and oh man. I was melted cheese away from homemade macaroni and cheese. This was so wild. This almost made up for the cookie debacle.

The milk mixed in just like the recipe said it should. My grin spread so wide it hurt. I kept stirring with one hand as I reached over and grabbed a handful of shredded cheese off the top of the pile. I sprinkled it into the pan, making sure it didn't clump it so it'd melt evenly into the sauce, and -

It was red.

Why...was cheddar cheese...red?

A sense of doom stole over me as I stared down at my melting cheese mixture. My _red_, melting cheese mixture. I looked at my hand, and my hand was red as well. It was coated in bright red powder.

When I turned my head, I could see that the pile of cheese in the bowl had a ring of red powder where my hand had scooped the center of the mound away. Beside the bowl, still rocking on its side where it'd been dropped, was the cayenne pepper jar I'd bought two weeks ago. It'd been part of a pre-packaged spice jar set. I'd lined it up with the sage, oregano, thyme, and basil against the wall on the counter, and there it'd stayed for the past two weeks.

Until Tarn had emptied its contents onto my cheese, that was. It had been Tarn. There were incriminating footprints in the powder spilled off the side of the bowl. Kaon's feet weren't' that big, and Tesarus was still busy drying himself off over on the other side of the sink.

I slowly picked up the jar. It looked like he'd gotten half of it out onto the cheese. Half a jar of cayenne pepper, now melting its way into my perfect mac'n'cheese mixture. I liked spicy things, but half a jar? _Half a jar?!_

I looked back at my cheese mixture. Half a jar of cayenne pepper? I was almost afraid to do it, but I stopped stirring and did a taste-test.

Eek. Ouch.

Well…okay. Alright. I _might_ be able to make this work. Noodles would probably neutralize some of the burn, and if I could just avoid adding _more_ pepper...maybe.

Gritting my teeth, I dug through the top layer of cheese until I reached unTarnished cheese. I sprinkled it in, watching it melt and stirring while muttering angrily to myself. Tarn had gone too far. The rest of the cheese was destined for nachos, no question about that now, but that didn't help this recipe right here. It had cost me money and time, and that just pissed me off. I stirred harder.

It was time I taught the little bit-head a lesson. There were cat-like levels of bastard, and then there was living with a spoiled brat. Tarn had crossed the line. Sure, yeah, I was paying attention to two other domestic electronics, now. Yes, I was spending time cooking with Tesarus instead of taking him for walks to the burger joint three blocks away. I got it, okay? He was jealous. Fine! Whatever! But he could just learn to fucking share me, if it was that big a deal.

He wasn't in sight, but he'd come out eventually. Tarn had a thing for gloating. He'd come out to see my reaction, and I was going to be ready for him.

I stirred and muttered, plotting as I made my no-longer-perfect cheese sauce. He would pay for messing with my macaroni. First the cookies, which had been sacrilege, and now this? It was time he paid.

There was a faint _vrrrm._ I ignored it. I carefully began pouring the cheese mixture onto the drained noodles. I only had two pots, so I'd had to make the cheese sauce in one while the noodles waited in the other. Another _vrrm_, closer this time, but I didn't look. I started scraping the last of the sauce out of the pan onto the macaroni. I tried a spoonful, and it wasn't too bad. Spicy, but tolerable. Not what I'd been aiming for, but at least it hadn't been ruined completely, _despite_ the best efforts of the tiny tank hiding under the table behind me. I'd seen where he was hiding, out of the corner of my eye. His attempt at remaining unseen failed due to tell-tale engine noise. That, and the fact that he'd started playing the _Mission Impossible_ theme song on low volume.

I turned the stove on low under the noodles and went to fill the sink with hot water again. Hot water and soap, and look at me just cleaning the dishes, yup. The Pet whined protest, oh dear, better give him that pan to lick clean. Why on Earth had I filled the sink? Silly me.

Silly me futzed around cleaning the countertop. I poked around in the catch-all cup I used to put the sponge-stick and a scrubbie in until I found a rubber band. A nice sturdy rubber band. Excellent.

The noodles needed to be stirred. Still being silly ol' me, I stepped toward the stove - and lunged for the table at the last second.

"Gotcha!"

_HISSSSSS!_

Tarn could hiss and struggle all he wanted, but I was big and finally mean enough to be ruthless. I pulled my I-Pod loose and snapped his dock shut before dropping him in the sink for a quick scrub. He kicked and flailed, hissing the whole while. I rinsed him thoroughly.

Then I rubber-banded his troublemaking little arms to his sides and dropped him into the noodles. My new recipe: Tarnaroni and cheese.

Oh, I turned the heat off, but I made sure to stir. Lots of stirring, so that the noodles got into every joint and he was coated in cheese from head to foot. The hissing went from anger to alarm as the spoon hooked his legs out from underneath him again and again. At one point, only his feet could be seen, kicking away in cheese-spraying panic as I stirred vigorously. Noodles and Tarn sloshed around the pot in a vicious whirlpool of cheese. I didn't know if domestic electronics could get dizzy, but I intended to find out.

When my arm was tired, I let him surface. "Had enough?"

By now, Kaon and Tesarus had ventured out onto the stove to see what the fuss was about. Well, Kaon couldn't actually see anything, but I lifted them both so Tarn could see them looking down at him. He braced his shoulder against the side of the pot to stop reeling and straightened proudly. The effect was rather lost due to him being chest-deep in macaroni, with noodles impaled on the points of his mask. He gave me defiant hiss anyway. _'Never give up, never surrender!'_

"Alrighty then."

The big spoon of doom descended from the sky to whirl him around in cheesy Hell once more. Hissing became spluttering. Tarn's engine began to burble oddly the longer I mixed him. I felt a bit bad about that, so I stopped after a couple more minutes. I knew he was water-proof, but still. It's cheese. I didn't know if cheese was somehow more damaging, or if maybe he had macaroni lodged somewhere important.

"Next time you screw with my cooking," I told him, balancing him on the spoon as I levered him out of the pot, "I'll make Tarnaroni out of you again. Got it?"

Only streaks of purple and black were visible under all the sticky cheese and noodle-bits. Tarn glared. I joggled the spoon, and his engine gave a hiccup as he wobbled precariously on it. His head whipped down, and he stared into the cheesy abyss. The abyss didn't exactly stare back, but my evil 'bot gave me sullen nod after a few seconds of contemplating continued noodley torment. He nodded sullenly. _Hissglurp._

I smirked. Primitive man triumphs once again! Via…macaroni and cheese. Hmm. I was the dominant sentient in the apartment by right of extremely strange combat. My methods were questionable, at best.

They weren't very effective, either. Tarn got even with me, not two minutes later. The one and only time he demanded cuddles from me, and he was covered in cheese.

And I? I was powerless to resist the cute.

Dang it.

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**_[A/N:_**_ NK's idea for Tarnaroni and cheese was the inspiration for this one. Blame her. Joe certainly is_.**_]_**


	10. Pt 10

**Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 10

**Warning: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating:** G

**Continuity: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division, Pharma, Scavengers, Bob the non-Insecticon

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

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**[* * * * *] **

* * *

I was being deceived.

Like that was new? Behind that door lay three minions of the Devil. They looked adorable and were made of 90% pure evil. The other 10% was whatever it was that made Tesarus snore like a buzzsaw, Tarn purr his engine when he was happy, and Kaon swing like Tarzan off the curtain cord. But that? That was the deceptive part. I knew they were deceiving me with the cute. They knew I knew it. I knew they knew I knew it. Since I still had to walk in the apartment door at some point, all the knowledge in the world couldn't help me.

The door looked so innocent. Well, no it kind of didn't. Three of my coworkers had ganged up and gotten me a poster to hang under the peephole. It was actually something Bob had gotten from the Transformers company to use in the store, but we don't carry the model, so he'd gotten a couple other people involve to decorate the dang thing for me instead. It was great. They stuck cut-out pictures of electrodomestics from magazine ads all over the advertisement poster for the cutest household tyrant you've ever seen. I'd laughed my ass off when they gave it to me. Life-size poster of Megatron? That was two days of entertainment, right there.

Tarn stared at for hours when I brought it home. When I gave him a permanent marker, he painstakingly wrote in binary around the border. He'd had to prop the marker on his shoulder to write with it. That hadn't deterred him in the slightest, which had delighted me since I'd filmed him the whole time. I haven't let him change it since, either. I translated it for anyone who asked. Bob had snorted a raisin, he'd laughed so hard. Tarn was _such_ a fanbot. The whole poster was hearts and kisses away from a marriage proposition, like a Justin Beiber fangirl doodling flowers and '_I love you XOXO'_s notes in the margins of her papers in high school. That poster was staying exactly how it was forever, man. Tarn being eighty kinds of embarrassed every time he saw it made getting kicked in the ankle totally worth it.

You'd think cute robots and fanbot binary love notes would make my door look innocent, but no. At 9:30 PM with the motion-sensitive overhead light in the hallway on the fritz, Megatron's glossy red poster optics glared at me like he was alive.

"You don't scare me," I told him, because yeah, talking to a sticker was totally sane. Shut up. It was late, and I was returning from a visiting a cute red-head's place. She had freckles and twin braids and Frosties, and that meant I was in big trouble. I was being deceived, because as soon as I opened that innocent-seeming door to face my herd of little dudes, electronic Hell was going to break loose. I'd ditched the Wendy's bag in the dumpster out back, but I probably still smelled like French fries and chicken nuggets. That was enough to earn Tesarus' wrath, and what riled one of them would gang them all up against me.

Brandishing my keys against Megatron's glare, I opened the door and cautiously stuck my head in. "Heeeeeeey? Guys? I'm home. Don't kill me."

There was nobody there. I knew better. Yup, I was in trouble. Usually I was met by demands for attention. Darkness and silence meant they were hiding and waiting to ambush me when I least expected it.

Well, it was either worry about inevitable tiny doom or go on with business as usual. Meh. Tesarus would eventually get even with me for cheating on him with the red-headed fast food wench of my dreams, but until he did?

Naked o'clock in the Joe household!

Look, it wasn't like I lived with anyone. Anyone who cared about exposed human genitalia, anyway. It was shower time for me. I turned on apartment lights and stripped as I went for the bathroom as if there was safety to be found there. I knew better, but dang it, I lived in hope. That, and it was still winter. The faster I got in the shower, the faster I could warm up.

There was a smug _vrrrrm_ behind me as I turned the shower on. When I glanced back, my pants were escaping the bathroom, the legs trailing in Tarn's wake. I wasn't alarmed. It was a common sight. He regularly made off with my clothes like they were victims being hauled off for disposal. Sometimes I worried I'd still be in them one day.

"There are tissues in the pocket!" I warned him. Theoretically, he was heading toward the laundry basket to bundle my pants in. In reality, there would likely be an Easter egg hunt to find where he hid them come laundry day. He liked to 'disappear' my clothes. I've found boxer shorts behind the bookcase and sweaters behind the blinds. If I hadn't take my phone out and put it on the bedside table already, he'd have dug it out the pocket and there'd be three electrodomestics running rampant through the apartment right now playing keep-away from me. Little bastards.

But, whatever, it kept them amused. I just stepped into the shower and left them to their mischief.

Let me explain my shower. It's a basically a concrete nook someone put a showerhead in. There's a window on the far wall, but the other two sides of the shower were just concrete blocks. There's no tub; just a tile floor and an 8-inch ledge I have to step over to separate the shower and the rest of the bathroom. I bought a Spiderman shower curtain, but that was it.

So when Tarn tried to throw Kaon into the shower, it was kind of noticeable. I mean, the only thing to hide behind was Spiderman's foot. There was much rustling of the shower curtain, and when I looked down, Kaon was zapping Tarn. Thank God, because I'd have gotten a nasty shock _and_ have had to take Kaon in tomorrow to get an electrical short circuit fixed. He knew as well as I did that the fun of frying my toes wasn't worth getting repairs afterward.

Nasty bitlet that Tarn was, he still couldn't do much against Kaon when the zapster decided not to cooperate. One _ZAP!_, and my evil MP3 player wobbled, blinking erratically as he recovered. Kaon squirmed loose and skeebled angrily. Tarn weakly hissed back. I predicted a heckuva leadership battle tonight.

"Right. You're all getting locked out of the bedroom," I told them as Tarn tried to go after his insubordinate fellow domestic electronic. His knees didn't quite want to work right yet, however. Temporarily safe, Kaon made a face up at me. "I don't care if you're cold. I'm not getting woken up by you guys stampeding over me in the middle of the friggin' night again!" An irritated dial-up noise answered me, like even the Internet disapproved of me - and then Kaon promptly booted Tarn off the ledge.

_Hiss! Hiss hiss hiss!_

Daaaaang, Kaon was in trouble tonight. When, y'know, Tarn eventually floundered upright and levered himself out of the shower. Which was going to take a while, because I promptly dropped a bar of soap on him when I inhaled a spray of water while laughing. The ongoing tirade of hissed death threats didn't help me calm down any. Oh God. Kaon's name was mud when Tarn caught up with him, but that'd been the most fantastic underhanded backstabbing I'd ever witnessed. Where was my camera when I needed it?

"You so deserved that," I wheezed after the coughing fit passed.

Tarn hissed what he thought of _my_ opinion before stomping around my feet to stand in the spray. I helpfully stood a little to one side, and we showered together almost companionable. If I disregarded the angry engine sounds at about ankle height, that was. Tarn scrubbed the suds off himself and furiously told me all about how he was going to pound Kaon into tinfoil. I made helpful '_uh-huh, yep, you sure will'_ grunts and let him seethe.

Abruptly, the water went from scalding to ice-cold. "Shit! Shit shit - " I clawed at the dial, but it was turned up all the way up. I slapped the water off and stuck my gorram shampoo-covered head out of the shower. "**Tesarus!** I will fucking **end** you!" I couldn't hear it, but I'd have bet anything that there were evil sniggering _whirr-chrrr_s coming from the cupboard in the kitchen where the water heater lived. "**Die**, you jerk!"

I was going to fucking smack that walking blender with a shoe. A really big one. I couldn't go turn on the water heater again without dripping all over the floor, and there was shampoo dripping down my forehead already. "Aw, shove it," I snapped in the direction of the irate hissing at my feet. I couldn't look down without getting shampoo in my frigging eyes. "If I have to be freezing cold, so do you. You're the one who's letting the little shits do whatever the heck they want." If I had to rinse my hair in cold water, then I was damn well going to get Tesarus in trouble for it.

From the volume of the hissing coming from Tarn, I'd succeeded. Instead of being amused by Tesarus' revenge, Tarn wandered around the shower being pissed off with me. I gingerly turned the water on again, and he started making what sounded like threats to life, limb, Tesla coils, and a specific somebody's X-optic. No electrodomestic liked being cold. Tarn was _not_ happy with an assault of cold water from above.

When I finished torturing us with cold water, I toed him out of the shower to go chase the other two down. "Yes, go," I muttered after the _VREEET_ of him peeling out of the bathroom. "Beat the snot outta him for me."

I figured I'd have time to dry off before the fighting got bad enough that I'd have to save somebody, but I'd forgotten the _Peaceful Tyranny_. I had time to dry off, get dressed, and grab a book before the show even started.

See, I'd bought a cat tree on discount at Petsmart a couple weeks back. I'd thought my guys would like climbing on it, and they did. Heck, they went D.I.Y. on it. They'd used office supplies and a doll playset to furnish the inside. For all I knew, they'd booby-trapped the darn thing, too. Tarn had insisted on naming it after a version of the Transformer's brand D-line tagline. I guess it was sort of along the same line as Bob's group of rejects insisting on picking out the textbooks he bought at a used book store for their nest. We couldn't figure out why Krok picked out philosophy books at all, but the whole scavenged lot of them refused to recharge anywhere but the hollowed out shells of books about the Weak Anthropic Principle. Weird, right? I at least _vaguely_ know why Tarn went for labeling the cat tree _Peaceful Tyranny_. The D.J.D. electrodomestics really have a thing for Megatron.

So Kaon and Tesarus took refuge in the _Peaceful Tyranny_, and that gave them the high ground as well as numbers. Not that either would do them a lick of good in the end. Tarn waited underneath. He switched between patrolling around the base in tank mode to just standing there, staring patiently. They had to come down at some point. There were no electrical outlets up there.

I thought playing the _Jeopardy_ theme song on repeat was a nice touch, personally.

I laid down on the couch with my book to watch the stand-off, but no way was I getting involved this time. "Don't look at me for help, dudes. You two are on your own." Kaon screeped faintly from inside. "Nope. Don't think I don't remember the cockroach bookmark you left me last week." Apprehensive dial-up tones answered me, and Tesarus stuck his head out to look down.

Tarn glared right back up at him, beady red optics narrow. _Hisssss._

"Not so cocky now, eh?" Tesarus gave me what probably would have been a pitiful look for someone who hadn't pranked me. Even I have boundaries on my cuteness threshold. "What, you want me to do something? **Now** I'm the one in charge? Shove it, man. I'm just the human flunky, right? Tarn's the bossman. Everybody knows that."

That got a fearful whirr from Tesarus, and more screep-skreebling from Kaon. Dominance fights in the D.J.D. were nasty, according to the Internet, but Tarns tended to triumph. My miniaturized homicidal manic was apparently a tough cookie. I didn't think I'd have to take anyone in for repairs - I thought I'd gotten it through his head that repairs came out of his music budget - but Tarn was going to make the other two 'bots miserable for the next few days. I'd end up having to buy a new bag of T-cogs for them to bribe their way back into his good graces.

In the meantime, I was Tarn's new favorite person. _I_, of everyone, knew my place in the apartment hierarchy. What had the world come to, that the human was the only one who knew his place? Hissing softly, he climbed up onto the couch to sit on my stomach while I read. It gave him a good vantage place to glare into the cat tree and plot.

I read. Tarn's engine quietly purred rage on top of me. Kaon and Tesarus occasionally made vaguely apologetic noises. Tarn and I made snarky commentary back at them.

It was one of the nicer evenings I'd had in a while, actually.

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**[A/N:** Because someone asked for an update, and I had time at long last. Also, Zanne did a thing! 0_0 Tarn tormenting the Pet for bubbles:

zanne . deviantart art / TF-Domestic-Electronics-Bubble-Maker-358683043 **]**


	11. Pt 11

**Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 11

**Warnings: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating:** PG

**Continuity: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division, Pharma, Scavengers, Bob the Insecticon, Perceptor, Ultra Magnus, Brainstorm

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

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**[* * * * *]**

**Look gift horses in the mouth, or "How Joe got Vos."**

**[* * * * *] **

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I still didn't know how I'd gotten stuck as the 'back up Bob' for the Domestic Electronics Department. Sure, I had one bitty-bot. Or four. But who was counting? They were all defective in one way or another, anyway. I hardly counted as an expert on what the electrodomestics were supposed to be like normally. I definitely wasn't somebody able to do sales for the department. You could watch sales plummet when I took charge.

Bob knew all the information on his aisle of tiny miniature minions. He spouted facts and talked about adaptive programming and main functions and whatnot. The extent of my sales ability was carrying six of them at a time and telling customers, "God, these things are cute. You should buy one."

Carl kept scheduling me to cover for Bob, however. Possibly because I could spend the hours doing inventory and rearranging the aisle even if I couldn't sell a thing. Following directions when the demo models pointed where to hang the hooks, I could do. Having an Ultra Magnus demo model active on the floor made easy work of keeping the A-line side of the aisle organized. Too easy, in fact. He had to be loaned out to oversee other departments on stock days so the D-line stock could be unpacked without miniature electronic judgment frowning down on the boxes.

He took his job as the duly appointed taskmaster really seriously, cracking down on the other electrodomestics indiscriminate of model line. Krok would schedule what Bob wore every day if Bob would let him, but yikes, this was controlling taken to another level! Ultra Magnus was meant to police an entire household's behavior and manage various appliances' schedules, and he was kind of fanatic about it when he went after the other demo models.

Bob warned me beforehand, or I'd have freaked out the first time I opened the ED department for him and couldn't find a single D-line demo model. Sure enough, Ultra Magnus had systematically tracked down every escaped electrodomestic who'd started fighting on the sales floor during the night, held a trial, and locked the guilty parties inside the break room refrigerator. That did explain why sometimes my sandwiches had footprints on them if I left my lunch at work overnight.

Left to their own devices, the D-line and A-line demo models would have at least one fight during the day. That's inevitable and why there always had to be somebody working the aisle. At night, Bob generally corralled them in separate display cases to keep them apart. As I'd found out, they could pick the locks instead of recharging like they were supposed to. And then Ultra Magnus would break up the fight and put everyone under lockdown until morning. He was programmed with something called the Tyrest Accord, which I guess was the base line of behavioral rules for the Transformers brand lines.

No wonder he always frowned. The little guy probably got no sleep for all the idiots running around breaking the rules. I'd been covering the aisle for three days now, and this was the second morning I'd come in to find a cluster of chilled, miserable little 'bots staring sadly up at me from the vegetable crisper when I opened up the 'fridge door. Busy night.

So, yeah. I was fully capable of doing what Ultra Magnus directed. It wasn't much in terms of sales, but holding armloads of cute, wriggling troublemakers while walking up and down the aisle to keep the different brands and demo models from fighting? That, I could do.

To my credit, I did manage to sell a handful of the cheaper electrodomestic brands, plus two Rewind models and a Brainstorm. The Rewind ones weren't hard; I just opened the YouTube channel on the counter laptop and let his videos speak for him. The second sale, I left the store Rewind by the laptop to blink the customer into dragging out his wallet. It worked like a charm.

Brainstorm…that'd been another sales technique altogether. I expected Bob to be proud of me for that one. Brainstorm's like that puppy who's so ugly he's cute, except that he's such a dick it's actually really funny to watch him. Selling him was kind of a minor miracle.

A professor had come idly browsing down the aisle, and she stopped to marvel over the Perceptor demo model, who politely _pip-pip_ped back at her. He was the newer version of the popular model type, updated to enforce safety rules on even D-line's laboratory equipment, and she had to take a look at his specs when she saw him. Apparently, this professor's university chemistry lab came with a Perceptor safety aide from before the upgrade. He seemed to be much more of a busybody and far friendlier than this newer version, who refused cuddling with a cold frown that froze even me out. I couldn't picture a talkative, happy Perceptor.

The professor and I got to talking about electrodomestics. She mentioned that Perceptor was so good at his job that it was actually difficult to get the freshmen to remember laboratory safety procedures. "They never have to remember on their own because he keeps reminding them." She'd sighed and wagged a finger at the demo Perceptor. "Short of locking you up, I can't get you to stop, either! It's like you're programmed to get absent-minded about anything except obsessing about lab safety."

I'd stared at her for a minute. "So…wait, Perceptor is **too** safe?" The store's Perceptor demo model had been primly perched on my shoulder at that point, and he'd smiled just barely when the professor nodded. The guy was militant enough that I could believe it. He plinked me with his little injection gun any time I tried dragging stock boxes without help. They were just rubber pellets, but _ow_. His aim was really good, and he always went for behind my ear when I didn't listen to him the first time.

Safety rules my ass. I didn't need another person to help carry every single box!

The spirit of revenge came down to motivate me. I'd smiled slowly. "Lady, if you need someone to demonstrate to your students why safety procedures are important to remember, I totally have the ED for you." Perceptor's head had whipped around, and I'd practically felt the horrified look being directed at me. I'd definitely felt the injector gun prodding my neck in unsubtle hint. "The students would **have** to remember all the safety procedures, because this 'bot will probably blow the place up if you leave him alone. And he's compatible with the Perceptor model, too!"

She'd watched Perceptor twitch and raised an eyebrow. "Compatible?"

"Sorta. They're similar model lines. Somebody in the Transformer brand thought it'd be bright to make two lab assistance models, but one's for students and one's supposed to be the professional model. Guess which one's the professional?" I'd jerked a thumb at Perceptor, who was affronted dignity away from attempting to pistol-whip me. "He's a little high-tech for most high school labs, but he'd try to supervise if you put him in with a bunch of students." The scandal about the high school that'd tried _that_ had been all over the Internet. "Big on safety, and he's got most of the EPA guidelines and all that stuffed in his head. Brainstorm, on the other hand," I'd turned to rummage under the department counter, "has all the same data but does absolutely nothing but assist. So if the kids want to build a giant bong out of a stick of dynamite, he's gonna be right there drafting the blueprint - ha! Gotcha."

Brainstorm had honked angrily as I dug him out of his plastic hamster cage. It was full of nothing but cotton balls and Q-Tips, and he'd been sentenced to another two days in there until Ultra Magnus was convinced he'd learned his lesson about taking apart Skid's accessories. I didn't think he'd ever learn. Perceptor was a stuck-up little glitch, but Brainstorm was amoral and annoying.

He'd spotted the customer and stopped struggling, but nothing could make Brainstorm stop sulking. He was a sulkmaster. He'd hung from my hand and glared at Perceptor, who'd glared right back.

The professor had looked back and forth between them. "Doesn't seem like there's any love lost, there."

I'd laughed. "Brainstorm is the children's model." There'd been a flinch and furious honk, but I'd kept talking with a ruthless, evil smile even as Perceptor drew himself up in unconscious pride. "Perceptor's the better known and 'adult' model, even though they're pretty much both the same except for, y'know, some differences in personality programming. Brainstorm doesn't adapt like Perceptor does. He's stubborn and way too curious to let safety get in the way of him trying new things out." Man, I couldn't tell you how many times I'd heard Bob bemoan this stuff. We kept Brainstorm in stock because he _did_ sell to the rich kid mad scientist crowd. I guess instead of a telescope or a chemistry set, some parents bought their kids a Brainstorm. Fair enough, but heck if any of us liked having the demo model loose in the store.

Wait, to amend that last thought: "It's not that he's a bad assistant. As long as the students obey the rules, he's cool. It's just that he's not going to stop them if they try stupid stuff. He gets, uh…" How to phrase this as to not scare off a customer? "Competitive. Yeaaaaah," I'd drawn out, glancing up at the ceiling where everyone knew inspiration and facts were stored. "Competitive's a good way to put it."

That'd gotten a laugh out of the woman. She'd seemed amused by the sizzling glares being passed between the electrodomestic on my shoulder and the one grumpily hanging from my hand. "Rivals?"

"Big time."

"Do they try to one-up each other?" The idea must have appealed, because she'd held out her own hand for me to pass over Brainstorm.

"Careful, he flies." Brainstorm had sourly glowered at me as she'd tightened her hold on him. As if he'd be so base as to squirm free of a _customer_? Hmmph. How dare I cut off his escape before he could try for it? "And yeah. Except that Perceptor just ignores him, and he can't stand that, so he keeps trying to get more attention. Peceptor gets more and more rule-conscious, but Brainstorm gets reckless. He pulls the stupidest crap you've ever seen if he thinks he can get away with it." Seriously. He'd been hanging upside down _from the ceiling_ while taking apart things. He hadn't even tried to hide what he was doing when the cashiers opened. And then he'd honked for hours inside his plastic hamster prison as if it was Ultra Magnus' fault for punishing him.

"Ah-ha." There'd been a definite sparkle of amusement in this lady's eyes. Somebody have been visualizing her freshmen facing consequences, I could tell. "Does he have a package?"

I'd gotten her one of the unactivated Brainstorm boxes to look over, and she'd gone off to talk on her phone and eat lunch. A couple hours she'd come back and bought a Brainstorm on her department's bill. I didn't think the Perceptor demo model was ever going to forgive me for inflicting that on his unsuspecting fellow Perceptor, but I bet lab classes at that university were going to get a heckuva lot more interesting.

That'd been yesterday, and I was still making sure that Perceptor couldn't get a clear shot at me. When Bob called the store to say he was back from the domestic electronics sales conference, I was ready to go. He wanted to take the rest of my shift so I didn't go into overtime because I'd been covering his department for his lazy butt this week. Three days of double shifts wasn't bad since the store had been slow, but - w00t! Two days off!

My buddy snorted Pepsi all over as I told the Brainstorm story. That made tolerating angry under-counter honking almost worth it.

Bob wiped splatters of Pepsi away with his shirt sleeve. "And I thought he hated **me**!"

"What'd you do?" I was still most of an aisle away from Perceptor at all times. It wasn't that he'd randomly plink me for no good reason, but his version of a reason right now could be as simple disobeying the dress code. I mean, I was off the clock, but I didn't think that'd stop him right now.

"Oh, hey, that's right. You weren't here when we still had the Prowl and Kup models." I blinked and eyed him askance for the odd answer, but he waved me off. "Don't ask. Hey! Hey, you gotta see this. Oh, man, you **gotta** see this!" Now, that manic grin? That was more like Bob. "The conference was for sales, right? So the brand sales reps were all over us." His hands gestured wildly, trying to convey fending off what appeared to be either a pack of attacking sales representatives or ravening wolves. I knew sales reps for big companies; sometimes, there wasn't much difference. "And I was there with, what, three others from our chain, right? Small group of us. We were sitting ducks, man. There was a friggin' gauntlet of sales reps waiting to get us after every meeting!"

While he was describing the sad plight of a guy who consistently tops our store's sales goals, Bob hauled a box out of his briefcase. He put it on the counter to sort the rest of his work stuff out later. I peered at the picture on the box and frowned, trying to figure out what it was supposed to look like. The box was pretty small for a domestic electronic, but the Minibot models were fairly popular. Looked like Bob had come back with new merchandise for the store. That was sort of the point of attending the conference, so that was good. Maybe. What _was_ this thing?

Transformers brand, but I didn't see a transformation. The picture looked really weird, but the Transformers brand's package art made all the electrodomestics look really odd anyway. They always looked like sculptures instead of tiny moving 'bots. This one looked weird even for that, however. It had four legs, but…

" - bought us sandwiches and everything. I think they were trying to get us drunk, but Kathy doesn't drink and Ron's allergic to yeast or something, so we kinda skipped out and tried to hide in the Toys'R'Us group after a while. But holy crap, turns out that the Toys'R'Us guys are hardcore partiers, and they were like, 'There's a rave downtown! Wanna come?' I mean, shit, why not? We went, and - "

Giving up on deciphering the picture, I turned the box over and read the side. A pencil sharpener and stapler? The box said it was a combination electric pencil sharpener on one end, and the stapler was on the other end. This was hilarious. It looked like you could stick pens and pencils in some sort of holes on its arm like a mobile holder, and its back opened up to hold paper clips, which it would vacuum up off desks. That sounded cute. Useful, too.

" - don't know, but Krok's gonna burn those socks as soon as he figures out what I traded for them. Anyway, whatcha think?"

I thought that Bob needed to introduce me to the Toys'R'Us crowd he'd been hanging out with. It sounded like they had a lot more fun than people employed at a toy store for kids should legally be allowed to. "I think I've been waiting my whole life for an electrodomestic who eats pencils and shits staples."

I checked the model number above the barcode and nodded to myself. That made sense.

Bob snickered. "You just figured out it's a Pet model, didn't you."

"What?" Glancing up, I frowned a bit. "Well, yeah. Why?"

He just grinned.

"What's your problem? I just looked at the code, and - " It clicked. "Aw, c'mon! Just because I know the Pet model numbers doesn't mean I'm transferring to your department!" I liked my ovens and washing machines, dangit! They didn't shoot me with rubber pellets or frown at me when I hung a hook in the wrong area of the aisle. There wasn't a single washing machine out there that was nearly as frustrating as Brainstorm to sell, either. "I have a Pet! Of course I know what the code is!"

"Uh-huh." That, my friends, was a shit-eating grin. The smug bastard stacked a bunch of sample boxes around on the counter and gloated, "You keep tellin' yourself that."

I snarled to myself. Between him, Carl, and my mob at home, I was going to end up working this aisle any day now. _Argh_.

He shook his head at my resentful mutters and, still grinning, pointed at the box. "Okay, okay. Check out the model name."

His grin was the kind of grin he got right before he piled Misfire, Spinister, and Crankcase on top of Fulcrum when the poor dude wasn't looking. It was a _'cue the indignant yelling_' grin. Not pure evil - I lived with that; it was far smaller than Bob and had a mask - but I knew to be wary of it.

I kept one suspicious eye on it as I turned the box around to read the name. I read it again. "…did you seriously get this one just because he's got your name?"

"Yes!" he crowed. "I knew you'd say that!"

I gave him the flattest look I could manage. "It's named 'Bob.' How the heck did you manage that?"

"Don't look at me! I just sell 'em! I don't even know who I'd bribe to get a bug named after me."

"A bug? Is that what he's supposed to be?" I turned the box over in my hands to squint at the picture again. "Doesn't look like a bug."

"It's an Insecticon model repurposed for the Pet line. A-line, though. **Definitely** a companion electronic," he assured me, taking the box back. "You're gonna flip when I activate this one." The demo models were always the first out when new stock started arriving, but…wait. We didn't activate the tiny ones! "Yeah, I know." Bob waved away my curious look. "It's a Minibot frame, but trust me, he's gonna be worth the hassle. This one's gonna sell like crazy. And you're not allowed to get one!"

There was a finger being shaken at me. Really? I batted at it and gave Bob a peeved look. "I'm not gonna buy a bug." I had more self-control than that. Sometimes. "Give me **some** credit."

"Ffft." Behold Bob's most doubtful stare. "You haven't seen him activated yet. He pounces on paper clips and rolls up into a ball when you poke him and gnaws on pencils and - "

"Oh God, **shut up**!"

Bob gave me a smug grin. I lowered my hands from covering my ears and huffed. Okay, he'd won this round. Bob the Insecticon already sounded forty kinds of adorable, and I didn't have a reason to get a desk appliance. Yet.

Yeah, I was going to be in trouble when this demo model got activated for the sales floor.

"On that note, I'm outta here," I said, hoisting my backpack off the floor. "I've got two days off, and I'm gonna have fun."

"Hold on, I got you something." Bob dug in his briefcase. "What's your plans? Wanna hit up Lenny & Spence tomorrow night? I want to see the band upstairs if they're playing."

"Mehhhh." That sounded expensive and social, two things I wasn't sure I'd be up to by tomorrow night. "I text you tomorrow afternoon if I wake up by then." I had every intention of making tonight a late night out. There were places to go, and I wanted to go out with people I didn't normally get time to see.

"Cool. Where did he go - rah!" Bob abruptly upended his briefcase and shook it, and something clattered onto the counter amidst the rain of coupons and a Toys'R'Us employment application. Also Misfire, but he clung determinedly to the edge of the briefcase instead of falling to the counter. He glanced around wildly only to spot Bob, who raised the briefcase up to look at his errant appliance face-to-face. Misfire smiled weakly and chattered, flustered that he'd been found out.

See, that right there was why I had to pat down my pockets and shake my backpack before leaving for work every day. Stowaway appliances were only funny until they started hissing at people from up in the rafters.

The little fetch-and-carry was snatched from his perch and shoved into a shirt pocket with a disgruntled noise from Bob. "Dumbass…here. I got this for you. One of the Transformers sales reps gave him to me." The thing that'd fallen to the counter was pushed toward me as my buddy started throwing papers back in the briefcase.

I had to peel layers of plastic wrap off it. Bob had apparently gone Saran-wrap happy on it instead of using proper gift wrap paper. "A keychain?" It had the Transformers' logo and some buttons on it, but it had a keyring hanging off the end. I dangled it from that and examined it dubiously. "Huh."

Bob shook his head. "Nah, it's actually a key for one of those really expensive import cars the Transformers brand teamed up with Ferrari to build. You know, the ones with the A.I. implanted in them?"

"**You got a** - "

A smack on the back calmed me down before my eyes bulged out of their sockets. "No! No way! It's the **key**, ya bum!" I braced my hands on my thighs and tried to recover as Bob proceeded to laugh his butt off at me. "What, did my luxurious lifestyle of hookers and blow give me away as a secret millionaire or something? I mean, yep, I totally don't need this job." He directed a disdainful look down the aisle at imagined peasantry. "I only wished to mingle with the commoners while incognito. Behind my humble apartment façade, I actually built a mansion. My closet is the secret entrance to the Batcave."

"Yeah, right. You as Bruce Wayne? I'd believe it's the door to the delusional land of Narnia, maybe," I managed when I could breath again. Trust me, the price tag on those A.I. Ferrari was enough to take the rug out from underneath anyone. "Depends on how hard you partied with the Toys'R'Us guys, I suppose." I picked up the key and gave it another look. It did sort of look like a car key, now that I knew what it was. Instead of flipping the key part out, it just looked like someone had taken a conventional carkey and added an electronic casing. "So…why did you get it?" A car key was a weird give-away sample.

"I dunno." Bob shrugged. "I told him there was no way the store would sell car accessories, but the guy was really persistent. You should see what he made Kathy take. Hold on, I've got a picture on my phone." Misfire pushed the phone out of his pocket before Bob did more than lift his hand. I didn't think Bob even noticed, but I sighed at the quietly chittering electrodomestic. He smugly perked his wings at me and ducked back out of sight. A cellphone was shoved in my face shortly thereafter. "Here, check this out!"

I obediently looked at the phone. "What."

"I know, right?"

I had no idea what I was looking at. There was a woman in the picture who was presumably Kathy, and she was smiling awkwardly as she held a flat golden thing. There was a man hugging her shoulders and beaming at the camera. From experience with overeager sales representatives, I was going to guess he was the Transformers sales rep. "Uh…okay, I give. What is it?"

"It's supposed to be the board for a chess game. It unfolds, see?" Bob turned the phone so he could point. "And then the A.I.'s supposed to talk with you as you play it." That sounded like a really expensive computer chess game over the Internet, but alright? I guess some people wanted to have even their board games semi-sentient. "The thing is," Bob said wryly, "all of the stuff this guy had was produced in either Germany or Italy, so the thing doesn't know any English. None of them do."

"So, what, he gave her a talking chess game that she can't understand?" And that couldn't understand her. Wow. Talk about a suck situation for that game's A.I.

"Pretty much." Misfire chattered as he was smushed under the phone slipped back into Bob's pocket. "Supposedly, the intelligent game board line will be introduced in the next couple of years with English options, but for now? Kathy's gonna have to work on her German."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Weird."

"You're telling me? Anyway, you should get going." The constant background chattering turned into a shrill _gleep!_ of surprise as Bob expertly plucked Misfire from his pocket, dropped him in the reorganized briefcase, and clicked it shut before the little jet could escape to buzz around and pester people. The smile my buddy gave me was of the _'pile of mischief'_ variety, and I eyed it warily. I had the feeling I was missing something important, here. "Take care of your expensive new car-less key, now!"

Yeah, that. I held the Ferrari key up and let my expression speak for me.

"Aw, don't be like that. Dream big, man! Consider it motivation to learn Italian, marry for money, and get your rich honey to buy you the car to match it."

I narrowed my eyes at him. I failed to see how any of that fit together anywhere but Bob's skewed version of reality. My hypothetical future spouse spoke Italian in his dream world, it seemed.

His grin stretched wider at my confusion. "Someday you'll thank me. You'll see. Besides," he heaved his briefcase off the counter, setting off a muffled stream of unhappy sounds from inside it, "the key's plenty cool on its own. I thought of you right away when I got it."

"Uh-huh. Right." Still giving him my most unimpressed look, I tucked the strange gift into my backpack before slinging it on. "Someday," I said as I turned to leave, "I'm gonna steal the Batmobile right out from underneath your nose, Bruce Wayne."

"Never!" was shouted after me. "I am the night! You cannot steal the night's sweet ride!"

I grinned when my back was turned. It was a funny present, but what the heck. It's not like I didn't already have enough Transformers brand stuff causing havoc in my apartment on a daily basis. A keychain was useful enough, and it'd make an entertaining story to tell if only for the Toys'R'Us tangents. And it was way more fun than the handfuls of brand name-stamped pens I brought back from my own run-ins with sales reps.

Eh, nevermind. I had bigger plans for my night than thinking about my lack of ludicrously expensive cars. Starting with just going home.

Every once and a while, I could take my horrid mob by surprise. It's harder than it sounded. I swore that they had better hearing than I did, and they knew what my footsteps sounded like coming up the stairs. I could do it, however. It just involved getting the right series of coincidences lined up. If I got off work at a weird time and wore sneakers instead of dress shoes and didn't meet anyone coming down the stairs as I went up - I could do it.

I knew I had a real chance for some hilarious pictures today.

The cashiers knew it, too. "Going home?"

"Yeah, see you in a couple days."

Three of them shouted in chorus, "Bring back pictures!"

I just about fell over. "Waaaah! Geez, way to give me a heart attack!"

"Pictures!"

"Aye aye!" I saluted the registers and took off for the bus stop while the front of the store was still laughing at me.

It went just as planned, too. I crept into my apartment and caught the world's best blackmail happening in my sink.

Smiling so wide my face hurt, I did my darndest to be stealthy as I held my camera high up and just barely into the kitchen to catch a video. Oh, man. The cashiers were going to swarm me. Bob was going to laugh so hard he'd hurt himself. I had to e-mail him this to show his mob, because not even Fulcrum would be scared of Tarn after seeing him cannonball into the sink. This was like a Barbie pool party, only with purple instead of pink everywhere. Also, Tarn and Tesarus were hitting each other with dish scrubbies instead of pool noodles. The Pet was paddling around creating bubbles and snapping at them. Kaon sprawled on his back, hands comfortably tucked up behind his head, floating around on top of a sponge. He looked like he was in recharge.

So much blackmail. Although it really only counted as blackmail if I extorted them with the promise not to share, and I intended to share this adorableness with everyone. _Everyone_.

After I'd gotten a good five minutes worth of material, I tip-toed back to the door and took off my backpack. I winced when I set it down - it rustled - but the merry splashing in the kitchen continued unabated. Stealth mission accomplished. Cute acquired with no appliance the wiser for my sneakiness.

I grabbed Tarn's mitten and Tesarus' leash before clearing my throat loudly. "Huh! Looks like nobody wants to go to the store with me!"

_WhhiirrWARK! _

_Scrreeeee-kztZAP! _

_Hissss? _

_VREET! _

_Whirr-chrrRRR!_

"Hmmph. Off I go…all alone…into the shadows…" Bemoaning my dark fate, I wandered out of the apartment and off down the hall, leaving the door open behind me. "Perhaps I'll turn to a life of crime. Bob will be forced to stop me for the greater good." Heh, now I was thinking of everything in terms of Batman. "What should my villain name be? Can I be the Joker?"

Meanwhile, the cacophony of alarmed, urgent, and just plain pissed-off noises continued as a sink full of domestic electronics scrambling to catch up with me. Hopefully, the Pet would handle the water now slopped liberally on the kitchen floor as my three monsters rushed after me. Internet dial-up screebled behind me: slow down, Kaon's short little legs couldn't go that fast! There was a louder churning sound as Tesarus hit the hallway and transformed to barrel after me. An angry _vrrrrm_ of a teensy tank engine finished off the parade, along with the click of Tarn closing the apartment door on his way out.

I stopped before reaching the stairs and made sure I had my phone ready. When they had just about caught up, I turned and gave them all a patently false look of astonishment. "Whoa, hey, where did you come from? I thought you were all too busy chasing bubbles!"

Perfect timing. Three dumbfounded expressions of embarrassment and one quick snap of my phone's camera later, and I was running down the steps two at a time as all three electrodomestics screamed furiously in binary and tumbled down the stairs after at me. My legs were longer; of course I reached the security door at the bottom first. I called up at electronic avalanche of vengeance, "I'm texting it to Bo~b, I'm texting it to Bo~o~ob!"

Shrieked declarations of hatred rained down upon me from on high. I chuckled as I did indeed text it to Bob. And four other people, because this was a wonderfully cute picture I felt I must share. Everyone needed to see the expressions of shock immortalized in this picture. Tarn's face alone was priceless, especially considering the fact that he didn't exactly have a face.

The threats continued the closer the glitches got, but I wasn't worried. It wasn't the first time I'd gotten an unnaturally cute picture of the D-line's psycho killer death squad. They'd forgive and forget it by the time we got to the end of the block.

Which they did. Tarn was safely installed in his mitten-pouch, Kaon rode in style on top of Tesarus, and Tesarus led the way with the end of the leash clipped onto him. Anyone under the illusion that I was in control of this group obviously couldn't hear the way that Tarn kept hissing instructions down at Tesarus on where to lead us next. I just smirked at gaping bystanders and fielded return texts from the people I'd spammed with the photo while following the pull on the leash.

Bob's return text was decidedly odd. _*Where's Vos?*_

How the heck would I know? _*California? I dunno.*_ It sounded like a city in California, anyway. No, wait, maybe Maine.

There was a long pause of walking, until Tarn demanded I let him down to join the other two in trying to corner a feral cat. There were two that lived in the alley at the end of the block, and they were having nothing to do with the trio of determined 'bots attempting to capture them. I let them harass the poor cats because they weren't trying to hurt the kitties. Just, well, catch and ride them, it seemed. "You guys know that nobody's ever saddle-trained a cat, right?"

Me of little faith, apparently. I got three very dismissive glares.

My phone vibrated. _*Dude. key. Where ishe? Did #$%er kill him already?*_

I stared at Bob's message. Aside from the usual text-speak and Bob's obscene nickname for Tesarus, it was legible English. I still couldn't understand it. _*?*_ I sent, beginning to get a bad feeling. A few seconds later, I added, _*I left the key in the apartment. Why?*_

Bob sent back a smiley face. With evil little eyebrows added. Oh, no. _*How's ur Italian?*_

Oh, _Hell no._

A couple minutes later, I'd scooped up my three confused, enraged, and cat-less electrodomestics and was pelting back toward my apartment. My phone vibrated again. _*I can'ttake him! He's djd!*_

I stumbled to a halt and gaped at the message. Tesarus and Kaon kicked at me, demanding a return to chasing cats, but I ignored them for the moment. What the heck? Another D-line Justice Division model? With an absurd altmode that'd have absolutely no frickin' use in my life, because I didn't have a car and didn't _want_ a car and goddammit, I didn't speak any Italian at all!

How in Flywheels' name had Bob ended up with the one freebie 'bot I still couldn't give back?!

…eh. Realistically, it couldn't have been any harder than a Pet model somehow sporting his own name.

Tarn applauded sarcastically when I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to shake my fist at the sky and yell, "Revenge will be **mine**, Batman! Do you hear me? **Reveeeeeeenge!**"

And that's how I got Vos.


	12. Pt 12

**Title: **Domestic Electronics, Pt. 12

**Warning: **This barely resembles Transformers at all. You're better off not reading.

**Rating:** PG-13 (for language)

**Continuity: **IDW/More Than Meets The Eye AU

**Characters: **Decepticon Justice Division

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **There was a translation error, and then Shibara drew a picture based on that error, and then I had to give it a story. It all went downhill from there.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**Everyday life is boring, or "The D.J.D. goes a'plunderin'." **

**[* * * * *] **

* * *

Ah, spring.

It sucked. I hated it. It was miserable, rainy, and on this particular day, really kind of chilly. Of course! Because I could expect nothing less of my day off.

And how was I spending my precious day off? Was I resting? Feet up on the couch, warm and cozy? No? But why not?

Because I was friggin' shopping, alright? Make my life complete, why don't you. Chores and horrible weather, all in one day. Oh, and who could forget boredom? It was just chilly enough that going out to actually do something sounded perfectly loathsome, because it just _kept raining._ Days like this made me restless and achy. And wet. Bored, wet, and unable to sit still: shopping at its best.

Well, if I was going to do it, I was going to do it in style. "Mush! Pull, ya bastards!" I raised my cutlass high and sneered at my pathetic crew. "Ne'er has the _Conflicted Democracy_ been crewed by such a wussy buncha land lubbers! Ye couldn't pull yer flea-bitten carcasses out of the drowned rat that birthed ye!"

Tesarus and Tarn snarled angrily back at me for maligning their nonexistent mother. Little engines howled as they threw themselves into their traces, determined to prove me wrong. Kaon screebled and heaved on his hold as well, but Tesarus' pull took him right off his feet as the line pulled taut. He dangled for a second in midair before his hands slipped. The little router fell flat on his back, where he flailed for a moment yelling furiously in dial-up.

"Put yer backs into it!" I yelled harshly. "I'll throw the lot of ye t' the sharks yet, I will!" There were peeved engine revs back at me, but I pointed at them with the bottle in my hand, and they went back to pulling. Kaon gamely clambered back up to put his back against Tesarus and help push.

Vos rasped something high and insulting at me from aboard the newly-dubbed 'ship.' He was likely commenting on how hard Half-Assed Pirate Dialect was to understand when he didn't even understand English. He didn't actually speak Italian; he had a few pre-recorded phrases that he just kept playing back. However, he wasn't programmed with English at all. We were still working on the basics, like 'yes,' 'no,' and 'stop doing that before someone calls the police.' That last one was kind of important. Vos seemed to like getting me into trouble.

For which reason I felt absolutely no shame in being mean and not trying to translate today. "Shut yer rum-hole," I ordered him instead. "Take th' wheel an' steer 'er, or ye'll walk th' plank!" I pointed with my cutlass for good measure, and Vos grumpily subsided.

A passing employee cleared her throat behind me. "Sir? Store policy says you have to purchase produce before use."

Uh, embarrassing? "Right. Sorry."

Vos rasped a laugh as I tossed the bag of carrots into the cart and tried to casually set the bottle of soy sauce down like I hadn't been pretending to swig from it a moment ago. I shook the cart until he shut up. "Rum-hole! Shut it!"

Fortunately for my dignity and remaining good mood, WheeZee's ShopMart was mostly deserted. At 2 PM on a rainy Tuesday, everybody was either at work or safely at home, out of the downpour. I, on the other hand, was out of food and definitely out of patience. Kaon and Vos had gotten into three fights, Tesarus had put my left house slipper through his grinder, and the Pet had gotten to the right one. Tarn had _caused_ two of the fights, force-fed Tesarus the one slipper, and smacked the Pet with the other until chewing happened. All before noon, and even after the Great Migration downstairs for laundry shenanigans. I was completely willing to sit on the basement steps reading while my dolts played hide-and-go-killed-each-other around the washing machines and under the stairs, but the rain had apparently filled them with restless energy, too.

One apartment was far too small for five electrodomestics and a Joe. Out into the rain we went, which resulted in bitchy, cold electrodomestics and a bitchy, cold Joe. But at least we were out of the apartment, and cooking warfare would occupy another hour once we got back.

Besides, shopping for food was far more fun when done as a raid for supplies. "Yarrrr," I said to my minions once the employee was safely out of earshot. "To the cereal aisle! Time to pillage Capt'n Crunch an' steal his wimmenfolk!"

Tesarus and Tarn roared - in miniature, so sort of like a baby lion attempting to roar - their enthusiastic agreement to this idea, although heck if I knew what they'd do with womenfolk. Both 'bots threw themselves against their puppy leashes. Since I'd tied those to the front of the supermarket cart, that resulted in Kaon nearly getting run over by the trolley's wheels as it skidded after them. Dial-up cursed Vos' lack of steering capabilities.

Vos rasped something back at him. For all I knew, it was Italian for, "I'll keelhaul your motherboard."

Whatever it was, Kaon started climbing the side of the cart with murder in his nonexistent optics. He reached the top and jumped down into the cart to seize the carrots as a rather bulky weapon. Vos armed himself with my new toothbrush. This was going to be an epic battle on the high seas, minus the seas and probably the epic as well.

"Yo ho, yo ho," I hummed while Kaon chased Vos around the inside of the cart, "a pirate's life for me - cool, Count Chocula's on sale. To Transylvania, ya scurvy seadogs!"

We were lucky the afternoon shift at WheeZee's was tolerant enough to put up with a middle-aged dude and four appliances running around their store with a cart full of stuff in tow. What was supposed to be a quick trip kept stretching out until even Tarn's pride dented enough that he looked tired. It was one way to wear them out, I supposed. After a while, I had to start pushing the cart, and the guys climbed up to perch in the front like hood ornaments. Every time I thought I was done, I inevitably remembered I was almost out of toilet bowl cleaner, or I wanted oranges, or Vos needed birdseed because he'd taken up pelting birds outside the window with it. Then Tesarus demanded tomatoes, so back to the produce department we had to go. But wait, Kaon urgently reminded me that the Pet was almost out of dish washing liquid. Back to housewares. Tarn had spilled the last of the milk this morning; to the dairy cooler.

By about the fourth pass by the cashiers, we'd given up on dignity and were wholesale surfing the cart: Tesarus, Kaon, and Vos braced in the front cheering, with Tarn standing on the child seat like the captain of the world's strangest ship. I had my feet up on the back of the cart, hanging off the end.

What? Just because I'd gotten older didn't mean I'd gotten any more mature. And I knew for a fact that Bob did stranger things in higher-end stores with his oddball Toys'R'Us friends, and most of them were my age or older. I made a point of remembering that any time some smart-ass told me to act my age.

"Really?" the store manager said as he checked us out. We'd apparently managed to scare the rest of the WheeZee cashiers off to their breaktime. Or maybe it was just a really slow, rainy afternoon.

"Yeah, really. Did you see that thing on Tumblr about the pool full of strawberry limeade and the slushie free-for-all at the Radison Hotel two weeks ago?"

"Yeah - no **way**."

_Hiss._ Tarn was the authority on managing idiotic behavior. He lived with me, after all. He paused in shoving groceries into plastic bags to give his two cents to the conversation. _Hiss. Hisssss!_

That summed up Bob's life pretty well, actually.

"C'mon, compared to that?" I gathered up plastic bags and puppy leashes. "Riding a cart around is just having fun."

We left the manager shaking his head incredulously. I hoped we'd make it out of sight before he found the disaster area where we'd taken out the Tostidos' display. Tarn and Tesarus could get a trolley rolling fairly fast when they pulled together, but they weren't so good at braking. Oops.

There were various pleased noises from ankle height when we got outside. So much sniggering. None of my 'bots liked cold, but they did like sharing their misery. Tesarus and Tarn led the way across the parking lot, holding some kind of puddle-jumping contest for who could splash my shoes with the most water every time. I retaliated by stomping the biggest puddles and trying to swamp them both with a tidal wave. I only had to backtrack once when Vos fell into a puddle he couldn't swim out of. Kaon rode in one of the bags, safely dry and probably using the toilet bowl cleaner on my new toothbrush, knowing him. There were suspicious rustling sounds coming from the bags, anyway, and I couldn't put them down without losing my grip on everything.

And lo, our adventurers ventured back out into the dank, grey spring day, full of rain and...rain. And rain. A large amount of rain.

I frowned upward. "Which one of you jerks poked holes in my umbrella?!"


End file.
